Ethereum Glamsterdam Tests Lift Sepolia Gas Toward 200 Million as Hoodi Targets October 27
By Node Zero
October 8, 2026
Ethereum developers are stress-testing the Glamsterdam upgrade on the public Sepolia testnet with block gas limits climbing toward 200 million units, more than triple the roughly 60 million ceiling that preceded the change. For NFT mints, marketplace settlements, and other high-throughput collectibles traffic that still clears on Ethereum mainnet today, the experiment is an early read on whether the network can absorb more payments and trades per block without pushing base fees into painful spikes during the next major on-chain art drop cycle.
CoinDesk reported on October 8, 2026 that Glamsterdam activated on Sepolia earlier in the week, letting builders run software with tokens that carry no real value before any mainnet vote. By early Thursday on the test network, consecutive blocks were being produced with limits near 200 million gas, while actual usage in a sample of more than 25 blocks landed between about 52 million and 92 million gas each. That range equals roughly 26% to 46% of the new allowance, meaning validators and client teams still have headroom before the larger budget faces a sustained full-block load.
Separately, testing group ethPandaOps data cited in the same coverage showed a six-minute voting window early Thursday in which all 32 scheduled slots produced blocks and about 99.97% of eligible Sepolia stake voted toward finality. That kind of participation matters for collectors and marketplaces because missed finality on a live chain can strand bids, delay royalty payouts, and complicate timed auctions; on Sepolia the point is to prove the client stack stays stable while gas parameters move.
Glamsterdam is not only about raw throughput. The upgrade also retunes how transactions pay for execution and for data access, which is the slice of cost that often bites ERC-721 and ERC-1155 contracts when metadata or batch mint calldata grows. Developers have not set a mainnet activation date. The next public test network, Hoodi, is tentatively scheduled for October 27, 2026, pending how Sepolia behaves under the higher gas ceiling.
The timing lands beside a bruising week for Ethereum-linked layer-2 networks that many NFT projects used for cheaper mint rails. Blast, tied to the Blur marketplace stack, is winding down with a October 26, 2026 user-interface withdrawal deadline, while Igloo plans to halt Abstract on December 15, 2026. Neither shutdown is Glamsterdam itself, but together they push more attention back to how Ethereum mainnet and its surviving rollups price block space for the next generation of collectibles launches.
Next protocol beat: Client teams will watch whether Sepolia blocks start brushing the 200 million gas cap under synthetic load, and whether Hoodi’s late-October window holds after this week’s finality metrics. Any slip in block production or a spike in failed transactions on testnet would delay the path toward a mainnet scheduling vote, which is the gate NFT infrastructure providers usually track before promising cheaper bulk mint windows on L1.
Bottom line: Glamsterdam on Sepolia is an early, measurable step toward a much larger per-block gas budget on Ethereum, with Hoodi penciled in for October 27 and no mainnet date yet. Collectors and marketplace operators should treat the testnet numbers as protocol telemetry, not a promise of cheaper mints tomorrow, but the direction matters while several NFT-friendly L2s exit the field.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or trading advice. The NFT market is highly volatile, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions related to digital assets. The cover image for this article may have been created using artificial intelligence (AI).
