Ethereum’s Next Upgrade Could Change How Fast It Can Really Go

In Brief

• Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade, planned for Q4 2026, puts L1 throughput at the center of the network’s near-term roadmap.
• Developers are targeting much higher capacity while using parallel processing and new state-pricing rules to keep validator hardware requirements manageable.
• Ethereum retains the largest developer community, although faster chains have made execution performance a much stronger factor in where applications choose to build.

Ethereum’s next big upgrade is Glamsterdam, currently planned for Q4 2026. It includes protocol changes designed to make larger blocks easier to process and prepare Ethereum for substantially higher L1 throughput. Ethereum developers have identified a post-upgrade gas limit around 200 million as a target, compared with 60 million today.

What makes this upgrade so important? Ethereum by far has the largest developer base in the blockchain space, but its speed and cost still lag.

With on-chain activities exploding across every vertical, high-performance chains have become serious destinations for trading, payments and consumer applications.

More Usable L1 Capacity

Federico Variola, CEO of Phemex, sees decentralized trading as one of the areas where Ethereum’s next steps could prove particularly important.