Ethereum’s Glamsterdam Upgrade Delayed: What Matters Now for ETH Holders

November 2, 2026 MM Crypto Team

Ethereum’s next major network upgrade will not arrive on schedule, and the delay itself is less important than what it reveals about where the network stands today. Glamsterdam, the upgrade set to follow Fusaka, was due to activate on the Hoodi testnet on October 26. That activation has been halted, no replacement date has been announced, and no mainnet date exists either. For ordinary holders, nothing changes today: balances, addresses and keys are untouched. For anyone trying to judge ether’s prospects over the coming months, however, the pause is a useful moment to separate the upgrade calendar from the demand picture, because the two stories point in different directions.

The facts of the halt are documented in an Ethereum Foundation notice dated October 22. According to that notice, the planned release of the Amsterdam execution layer and the Gloas consensus layer on Hoodi was removed from the testnet’s configuration. A second change scheduled for the same moment fell away with it: the gas limit on Hoodi was meant to rise to 200 million, a measure of how much computation can fit into a block. That increase has also been postponed. NewsBTC’s reporting of the developer call, cited in the analysis of the delay, confirms that neither a replacement date for Hoodi nor a date for mainnet appears in the notice. Until developers publish a new schedule, any talk of a specific launch month is speculation, not a commitment.

How Ethereum upgrades travel from testnet to mainnet

To understand why a testnet delay matters at all, it helps to understand the route every Ethereum upgrade takes. No change goes straight to the main network, where real money is at stake. Instead, it passes through a series of test networks that mimic the main chain without putting real funds at risk. Sepolia, a long-running public testnet, had its turn with Glamsterdam on October 6. Hoodi was next in line, and Hoodi carries a particular weight in this process. It is the testnet where validator node operators rehearse their software under conditions as close to real as possible, running the same kinds of operations they will run on mainnet, before actual value depends on the code working correctly.

The open question behind the pause: EIP-8037

The developers have named a single change proposal as the reason for the halt: EIP-8037. An EIP, short for Ethereum Improvement Proposal, is a formal proposal that changes a rule of the blockchain. What remains open, according to the analysis of the delay, is how this proposal interacts with contracts already running on mainnet. Smart contracts are programs that sit immutably on the blockchain, and changing a rule also changes the conditions under which those programs have been working, in some cases for years.

A bug fixed days earlier shows the process working

The Hoodi halt did not arrive in isolation. Days earlier, developers reported fixing a separate Glamsterdam bug during testing, a problem with how the upgrade would process deposits waiting to be credited for new validators. TradingView’s reporting of that fix, published October 27, said the bug could have enabled people to steal ether that staking services meant for new validators, and that the repair changed the rules for handling validator deposits. Developers finalised the fix on October 23, and the change became part of Ethereum’s consensus specifications.

What the delay does not change for holders

Ether traded at around $2,256 on Saturday evening, about 1.4 percent higher than 24 hours earlier, with a daily low of $2,221 and a daily high of $2,256. The price remains around 54 percent below its record of $4,946. Over the past seven days, ether averaged $2,307, and over the past 30 days it averaged $2,465, so the current price sits below both averages, roughly 8 percent under the monthly mean. On the downside, the daily low at $2,221 is the first level to watch, with the round $2,300 mark the next hurdle above and the 30-day average at $2,465 beyond that. As long as the price stays below that average, moves higher remain counter-moves within a downtrend rather than a reversal, and what would matter is a closing price above $2,465 that holds for more than a day.

The demand problem the delay cannot hide

The more important weekend story, according to the analysis, is not the upgrade calendar but demand for block space itself, and it can be read off the gas fee. Every transaction on Ethereum pays a base fee, counted in Gwei, a billionth of an ether, which rises when many people want to fill blocks at the same time. That makes it the most honest measure of demand for computing time on the network. On Saturday evening the base fee stood at 0.058 Gwei, against a 24-hour average of 0.092 Gwei and a 30-day average of 0.484 Gwei. Since the base fee was introduced, its long-run average has been 18.51 Gwei, so the current value is roughly one three-hundredth of that mean. For the price outlook, it is worse news, and the reason sits in the mechanics of the fee.

Since the fee reform of 2021, the base fee is not paid to validators but destroyed, a process called burning. At the same time, the blockchain continuously creates new ether as a reward for validators. The two forces run against each other: if the burn exceeds issuance, the circulating supply falls, and if it stays below, supply grows. The point at which the two cancel out currently sits at 13.63 Gwei, a threshold published by the data service ultrasound.money. Measured against the Saturday evening level of 0.058 Gwei, a factor of roughly 235 is missing before the balance tips. An upgrade that raises capacity solves a problem the network does not currently have. With blocks nowhere near full, more room on an empty road does nothing for traffic.

Supply is growing again, and staking must beat dilution

The arithmetic of that gap is visible in the supply figures. Twenty-four hours before Saturday evening, the circulating supply stood at 122,174,288 ether; by Saturday evening it had reached 122,177,242 ether, an increase of 2,954 ether in a single day. If that pace held, around 1.08 million ether would be added over a year, an expansion of about 0.88 percent a year relative to current holdings. The burn behind those numbers is correspondingly thin: 19.92 ether destroyed over the past 24 hours, worth around $44,600 at the current price, 1,964 ether over seven days and 3,150 ether over 30 days. Since burning began, the network has destroyed around 4.64 million ether in total, so a full month’s contribution amounts to barely seven ten-thousandths of that sum. Part of the activity has also moved to second-layer networks, where transactions are cheaper and only land on the main chain in bundled form.

This is where the staking angle becomes concrete. Roughly 43.8 million ether is staked, close to 36 percent of supply, according to Beaconcha.in data reported around the end of October, with the total having climbed from about 41.5 million in August. Staking means making ether available to the blockchain to secure it and receiving interest in ether in return. But that yield comes from the same issuance that expands the supply, so a staker receives a share of the dilution rather than compensation standing apart from it. With supply growing at roughly 0.88 percent a year, a staking yield has to beat that figure before anything is left in real terms. Reported annualised staking yields have drifted lower, from around 2.81 percent toward 2.63 percent over recent quarters, which still clears the dilution hurdle but leaves a thinner real margin than holders may assume, especially after fees, taxes and lock-up periods are counted.

Why a quarterly target is not a November promise

One misunderstanding worth clearing up is the difference between a broad target and a dated commitment. Reports around the October bug fix described expectations that Glamsterdam could be finalised by the end of November, while other discussion has framed the upgrade in quarterly terms. Neither framing appears in the October 22 notice, which sets no replacement Hoodi date and no mainnet date at all. A quarterly target describes an ambition for a three-month window; it is not a promise that a specific month within that window will deliver. Until developers announce a new Hoodi activation date and that testnet run succeeds, the honest position is that the timeline is open. Holders who had factored the upgrade in as a near-term price driver now have to push that point back without knowing how far.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Glamsterdam upgrade?

Glamsterdam is Ethereum’s next major upgrade after Fusaka. It bundles several change proposals, including the Amsterdam execution layer and the Gloas consensus layer, and it separates the jobs of building blocks and validating them, which are bundled together today.

Why was the Hoodi testnet activation halted?

Developers removed the planned release from Hoodi’s configuration in an October 22 notice, citing an open question around EIP-8037 and how it interacts with contracts already running on mainnet. A separate deposit-handling bug found in testing was fixed on October 23.

Do ether holders need to do anything because of the delay?

No. The notice is addressed to Hoodi testnet node operators, not mainnet users. Balances, addresses and keys are unaffected, and no action is required from holders on exchanges or in their own wallets.

Why does the base fee matter more than the upgrade date right now?

The base fee measures real demand for block space. At 0.058 Gwei it sits far below the 13.63 Gwei level where burning would offset new issuance, so supply is growing at roughly 0.88 percent a year. Extra capacity from an upgrade does not help while blocks are nowhere near full.

What should stakers compare their yield against?

A staking yield should be compared with the rate of supply growth, around 0.88 percent a year at the current pace. Only the portion of yield above that dilution represents a real gain, before fees, taxes and lock-up terms are taken into account.

Source: CoinStats

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