Ethereum pushes Glamsterdam to Q4 2026 as ETH-SOL rivalry intensifies

Ethereum pushed Glamsterdam to Q4 2026, a delay one investor says leaves ETH set to outperform Solana over 12 months.

Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter said he is reviewing 66 proposals for Hegotá, the upgrade after Glamsterdam, with only some likely to clear implementation and testnet stages in time for a 2027 release.

The revised schedule follows the Aug. 17 launch of the Plåtåberget public testnet, which will run for several months before testing expands to Sepolia and Hoodi. A production-equivalent fork is set for Aug. 20, and the Ethereum Foundation warned that gas-system changes could break wallets, indexers and gas-estimation tools that treat the gas limit as fixed. ETH traded at $1,910, up 1.1 percent, with Bitcoin dominance at 56.57 percent and ETH at 10.11 percent, per CryptoRank.

The delay pushes faster block times and lower Layer 1 fees later, giving Solana a longer window to court developers. Hegotá's scope, with a shortlist due around Aug. 27 and client priorities by Sept. 10, will determine whether Ethereum can close that gap in 2027.

A testnet-first approach

The Ethereum Foundation launched Plåtåberget as a longer-lived public testnet, unlike the short devnets used before, to verify upgrade impacts in a stable environment. The gas-system changes tied to Glamsterdam are incompatible with some applications, so tools relying on a fixed gas limit must be updated before mainnet. The Foundation's protocol operations team urged affected developers to act immediately.

Hegotá's crowded candidate list

FOCIL, or EIP-7805, is the only confirmed core consensus proposal, aiming to cut cases where specialized builders exclude valid transactions by letting validator committees require certain transactions be included. Frame transactions, EIP-8141, remain under review, alongside scalability proposals covering gas pricing, state-growth costs and a push to raise the gas limit to 600 million. Ethlabs, an independent research lab launched in June, urged narrowing the scope, warning that loading too many proposals into Hegotá could push the 2027 target back again. It recommended deferring EIP-8375, which would burn part of external builders' bid value, and EIP-8182, which would enable private ETH and ERC-20 transfers.

The institutional bet that ETH outperforms SOL over 12 months rests on Ethereum's network effects and roadmap execution, not near-term speed. If Hegotá's scope balloons, the delay could widen Solana's window and test that conviction. For now, the roadmap shows a risk-averse Ethereum prioritizing stability over shipping features quickly.

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