Ethereum Foundation Launches Platåberget Public Testnet for Glamsterdam Upgrade

The Ethereum Foundation has launched Platåberget, a public testnet designed to facilitate community-wide experimentation with the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade. Moving beyond private development environments, the launch allows node operators, stakers, and infrastructure providers to test protocol changes in a public setting before the upgrade reaches established testnets like Sepolia and eventually the Ethereum mainnet.

According to reports from All Core Devs Execution (ACDE) meeting #242, developers designated Devnet-8 as the basis for the Platåberget environment. The network is scheduled to undergo the Glamsterdam fork on August 20, 2026, starting in a pre-fork state to allow participants to observe the transition on a populated chain.

Infrastructure and Gas Repricing

The Glamsterdam upgrade introduces structural changes to Ethereum’s execution and block production mechanisms. A central component of the update is the implementation of Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) via EIP-7928, which aims to provide nodes with advance knowledge of state access to enable more efficient parallel transaction execution.

The upgrade also involves significant adjustments to gas pricing and cost assumptions. Specifically, the Foundation has highlighted the following technical shifts:

• EIP-8037: Introduces the state gas dimension.
• EIP-2780 and EIP-8038: Address decomposed costs for specific operations.
• Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS): Aims to refine how blocks are constructed and distributed across the network.

The Foundation warned that the gas repricing changes could affect tools that rely on fixed maximum gas limits. This includes wallets, blockchain indexers, and gas estimators, which may require updates to remain compatible with the new state gas dimension. Infrastructure teams are encouraged to use the Platåberget environment to identify potential compatibility issues early.

The Glamsterdam upgrade follows a series of private devnet simulations that validated the initial bundle of protocol changes. Current projections for a mainnet deployment target point to the fourth quarter of 2026, although the final timing remains subject to further testing and developer decisions. The Platåberget testnet is expected to remain operational for several months to support continued stability and compatibility testing.