Ethereum opens Platåberget testnet as Glamsterdam targets 200M gas

Platåberget gives developers a public sandbox to test Glamsterdam's gas repricing and ePBS changes before mainnet activation.

The Ethereum Foundation opened Platåberget, a public testnet for Glamsterdam, on August 17, with the fork set for August 20 and gas targeting 200 million.

The testnet gives developers a stable environment to test breaking changes before the upgrade reaches Sepolia and Hoodi, the Ethereum Foundation's Protocol DevOps team said in a blog post.

Glamsterdam, combining the Gloas consensus-layer and Amsterdam execution-layer upgrades, introduces enshrined proposer-builder separation (EIP-7732), block-level access lists (EIP-7928), and a coordinated gas repricing bundle. The current gas limit of 60 million would rise toward 200 million, while maximum deployed contract size increases from 24 KiB to 64 KiB and initcode from 48 KiB to 128 KiB.

Any tool that assumes a fixed maximum gas limit — wallets, indexers, gas estimators — will stop working correctly after the upgrade, the Foundation warned. The testnet runs for a few months, with community feedback expected to take about a month before the upgrade moves to Sepolia and Hoodi, then mainnet.

Gas repricing breaks fixed-limit tools

The gas repricing is the most far-reaching change for downstream tooling. EIP-8037 introduces a separate state gas dimension for operations that create new state, metered at a fixed cost per state byte (CPSB) charged at runtime rather than up front. A plain ETH transfer is no longer always flat 21,000 gas: transfers to existing accounts still cost 21,000, now decomposed into TX_BASE_COST + COLD_ACCOUNT_ACCESS + TX_VALUE_COST, but sending funds to a new account incurs additional state gas. EIP-2780 covers the decomposed intrinsic cost, and EIP-8038 handles state-access increases.

ePBS shifts block building into the protocol

EIP-7732 brings proposer-builder separation into Ethereum's protocol itself. About 88 percent of Ethereum blocks are currently assembled off-chain through MEV-Boost relays, according to Everstake, a staking provider on the network. The current setup leaves validators without protocol-level contingencies when relays fail to deliver. The replacement system attests that a block arrived on schedule via on-chain builder identities, signed bids, and a new payload-timeliness committee. Block verification windows could expand from roughly two seconds to about nine seconds.

EIP-7928 introduces block-level access lists that record every account and storage slot a block touches, along with resulting state changes. Together with ePBS, these changes lay the groundwork for the gas limit increase from 60 million toward 200 million.

Platåberget launched in mainnet's current state, with Glamsterdam changes going live via a fork on August 20. This lets operators simulate the transition on an active chain rather than joining a chain already running new rules. The validator set is small but publicly joinable, allowing anyone to deposit a new validator and test builder deposit workflows.

After community feedback is incorporated into client software, a non-finality devnet will follow within the month to test pathological consensus scenarios. The upgrade then moves to Sepolia and Hoodi before reaching Ethereum mainnet. The ecosystem is already looking ahead to the Hegotá upgrade, expected in 2027.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.