Ethereum's Glamsterdam Sepolia Test Gets Late Fix Ahead of Gas-Limit Surge

Ethereum developers issued a late software update ahead of Tuesday's Glamsterdam rehearsal on Sepolia, correcting a configuration issue that could have led some validators to produce blocks far smaller than planned. Glamsterdam is Ethereum's next major upgrade and will first go live on Sepolia, the test network used to trial protocol changes with tokens that carry no real-world value. A key part of Tuesday's test is a sharp increase in Sepolia's gas limit to 200 million from roughly 60 million. Gas is Ethereum's measure of the computing work allowed in each block. Raising the limit expands capacity for transactions and more complex activity, while increasing the workload for the machines running validator software. Prysm, a widely used validator client, released version 7.2.1 late Monday with the 200 million setting included. The prior release was completed before Sepolia's configuration was updated, meaning validators would have remained at 60 million unless operators manually changed the parameter. With the latest version, validators will automatically begin proposing 200 million-gas blocks when Glamsterdam activates on Sepolia at 13:53:36 UTC on Oct. 6. Blocks produced at the old limit would have weakened the test, which is designed to assess how the network performs at the larger block size. Ethereum has been increasing block capacity in stages to gauge how far it can go before running a validator becomes too resource-intensive or costly. More block space can ultimately support additional trading, stablecoin transfers and other applications before users compete for limited capacity and drive fees higher. The 200 million gas limit applies only to Sepolia, and Glamsterdam has not yet been activated on Ethereum's main network. Tuesday's results will help determine whether validators can reliably handle blocks more than three times Sepolia's previous default, and how much of that capacity increase is appropriate for Ethereum itself.