Ethereum (ETH) has been facing a strange problem for years.
Ethereum is known by most in the crypto space. Developers build on it. Banks experiment with it. Stablecoins move through it. It is the foundation of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications. Yet, when the market talks about the biggest cryptocurrencies, it is Bitcoin which is often in the spotlight while Ethereum is seen as the complicated second choice.
This is most noticeable even in 2026. Ethereum is still the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap although it is currently far lower than its 2025 peak of about $5,000.
But the price is only part of the story. The Ethereum ecosystem is still expanding, and now the network is preparing for another big change: Glamsterdam.
Glamsterdam is part of a much larger plan to allow Ethereum to handle a lot more activity, while keeping the network’s decentralization intact.
Before we dwell deeper into the Glamsterdam Upgrade, let’s first try to understand in more detail what Ethereum actually is.
What Is Ethereum?
Bitcoin was born out of a fairly simple idea: to create digital money that can function without a central bank.
Ethereum took that a step further.
Ethereum is a blockchain that allows people to run programs on it, not just a digital currency.
Such programs are known as smart contracts.
It’s just a piece of software that lives on the blockchain and automatically adheres to rules coded into it.
That sounds complicated but imagine a vending machine.
You put money into the machine, select a drink and the machine follows a predefined set of instructions. Nobody at the counter needs to approve the transaction.
ETH is the native asset that powers the Ethereum blockchain. Users pay ETH to transact and validators stake ETH to help secure the network, making it decentralized.
That is why Ethereum is different from Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is primarily designed around digital money.
Ethereum is trying to become infrastructure for an entire digital financial system.
As more people use Ethereum, its main network cannot process unlimited activity.
So, Layer 2 Blockchain Picked Up More Activity.
Why Ethereum’s Activity Moved To Layer 2s?
Imagine Ethereum as a very expensive highway in the centre of a city.
The highway is extremely secure and important but there is
So instead of making every car use that highway directly, new roads were built around it.
That is roughly what Layer 2 (L2) networks do.
A Layer 2 is a blockchain built on top of Ethereum that processes transactions away from Ethereum’s main network and then sends the important information back to Ethereum for final settlement.
Some of the largest examples include Base, Arbitrum and Optimism.
If users are trading, lending, gaming and moving money on Layer 2 networks instead of directly on Ethereum blockchain, Ethereum itself collects less of those transaction fees.
This has become one of the biggest criticisms of the Ethereum investment thesis.
And it is also one of the reasons Glamsterdam is so important.
Why Ethereum Needs Glamsterdam?
Ethereum has been slowly upgrading its network to be faster, cheaper and more supportive of more users.
Since the Merge Upgrade in 2022, Ethereum is secured differently. Instead of the miners using computers to process transactions, the network switched to a system where people can lock up ETH to help secure Ethereum.
The Shanghai upgrade in 2023 then allowed these users to withdraw their staked ETH.
Dencun made it much cheaper for Ethereum’s Layer 2 networks to send transaction data back to Ethereum.
In December 2025, Ethereum’s scaling was taken up a notch with Fusaka Upgrade. This allowed the network to process a lot more data, without every computer that ran Ethereum needing to keep a full copy of everything. It also increased the amount of activity Ethereum could handle at once.
Now comes Glamsterdam.
Ethereum is targeting Q4 2026 for Glamsterdam, although the exact launch date has not been finalized.
And the goal is pretty simple:
Make Ethereum handle more activity, make it more efficient and make transactions cheaper.
That is what matters for everyday users.
Two of the biggest changes are ePBS and Block-level Access Lists, or BALs.
What Is The Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade?
There are two major parts of the upgrade that are particularly important: Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) and Block-Level Access Lists (BALs).
1. ePBS: Making Ethereum’s Transaction Selection More Efficient
Before a transaction can be completed, Ethereum has to decide which transactions should be processed and in what order.
Today, different participants are involved in this process.
One participant essentially proposes what Ethereum should process, while specialized systems help determine which transactions should go into that batch of activity.
Much of this coordination currently happens through infrastructure outside Ethereum’s core rules. Glamsterdam’s ePBS proposal is designed to bring more of this process directly into Ethereum, making transaction processing more secure and efficient as the network grows.
2. BALs: Helping Ethereum Process More Activity At The Same Time
Today, Ethereum often has to be careful about processing transactions one after another because one transaction can sometimes affect information that another transaction needs.
Block-Level Access Lists, or BALs, are designed to give Ethereum a clearer map of what each transaction is going to use or change.
Think of BALs as a shopping list.
Before processing a group of transactions, Ethereum can see which accounts and pieces of information those transactions are going to touch.
If two transactions do not interfere with each other, Ethereum can handle two transactions at the same time.
Ethereum’s roadmap indicates that BALs could help increase the network’s block gas limit from around 60 million toward 200 million.
You can think of the gas limit as the amount of computing work Ethereum allows itself to handle in one batch of activity.
In simple terms, ePBS improves how Ethereum organizes the work, while BALs could allow more of that work to happen simultaneously. Together, they are designed to give Ethereum more capacity without simply making the network heavier.
Will Ethereum Glamsterdam Reduce Gas Fees?
Ethereum has proposed gas repricing changes in Glamsterdam that aim to make the cost of different operations better reflect the resources they actually use.
The likely direction is lower costs through greater capacity and more efficient pricing, but it would be wrong to promise that every Ethereum transaction will suddenly become cheap.
The Bigger Ethereum Roadmap
Glamsterdam is only one step.
Ethereum’s roadmap is moving toward several long-term goals at the same time.
The first is scaling.
Ethereum wants more transactions to happen across the main network and Layer 2s without sacrificing decentralization.
The second is better user experience.
Ethereum is also working to make wallets easier to use through account abstraction, so users eventually need to understand less of the underlying blockchain mechanics.
The third is security.
Ethereum is also researching post quantum security so its cryptography can be upgraded before quantum computers become a serious threat.
After Glamsterdam, Ethereum’s next major upgrade is expected to focus further on these areas.
One example is Fork-choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL), a mechanism designed to make it harder for block builders to censor valid transactions.
That matters because Ethereum is no longer just trying to become faster.
It is trying to become infrastructure that can still function decades from now.
Ethereum’s Real-World Economy Is Already Growing
The strongest argument for Ethereum is not Glamsterdam itself.
It is what people are already building on top of Ethereum.
Stablecoins are a good example.
Stablecoins are digital tokens designed to represent currencies such as the U.S. dollar.
As of 2026, Ethereum says it accounts for more than 60% of global stablecoin supply and the network hosts more than 75% of tokenized real-world assets.
Then there are tokenized real-world assets.
Banks and financial institutions are increasingly putting Treasury funds, bonds and other traditional financial products onto blockchains.
Imagine government bonds, money-market funds and dollar payments moving globally as easily as sending a crypto token.
Ethereum is already being used as infrastructure for that experiment.
The more financial activity moves on-chain, the more valuable a reliable settlement network can become.
How Can ETH Be Converted After The Glamsterdam Hard Fork?
The short answer is: It doesn’t need converting.
A hard fork is a change in the operating software of the Ethereum network.
It doesn’t create a new ETH token for the users to swap into.
When Glamsterdam eventually goes live, ETH held in a normal wallet remains ETH.
Users should not need to manually exchange their ETH because of the upgrade. The changes happen at the network level, while validators and node operators are responsible for running compatible software.
Ethereum’s roadmap explicitly treats Glamsterdam as a protocol upgrade rather than a token migration.
This is important because whenever a major blockchain upgrade approaches, fake migration links and scams can appear.
There is no legitimate “Glamsterdam ETH conversion” that ordinary holders need to perform.
What To Watch Next
The most important signal is not the name of the upgrade.
It is whether Ethereum can turn these upgrades into real usage.
Watch Glamsterdam’s devnet and testnet progress, Ethereum’s capacity and decentralization, Layer 2 activity, stablecoin and RWA growth, and ETH staking and exchange balances.
Most importantly, watch ETH vs BTC 2026: If network activity grows while ETH regains ground against Bitcoin, the market may be recognizing Ethereum’s infrastructure value. If usage grows but ETH continues losing ground, the value-capture problem remains unresolved.
That distinction will matter more than any single price target.
Key Takeaway
At start, Ethereum looks like another cryptocurrency that is struggling to keep up with Bitcoin.
Look closer and the picture is different.
Ethereum is becoming a network underneath networks.
Layer 2s use it for settlement.
Stablecoins use it to move digital dollars.
DeFi applications use it to create financial markets.
Institutions are putting tokenized assets on it.
Validators stake ETH to secure it.
And now Glamsterdam is being developed to make the underlying network capable of handling much more activity.
That does not guarantee that ETH will outperform Bitcoin.
It does not guarantee a return to its previous highs.
And it certainly does not remove the competition from Solana and other blockchains.
But it creates a credible long-term thesis.
The real Ethereum bet is not that one upgrade will send ETH higher.
It is that as more of the world’s financial assets and transactions move onto blockchains, Ethereum can remain one of the main settlement layers underneath that economy.
Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade 2026 is important because it is another step toward making that vision technically possible.
But for anyone who has spent years looking at Ethereum only as “the second-biggest cryptocurrency,” there is a bigger story underneath the price chart.
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