Ethereum's 3x Gas Buffet Is Open on Sepolia — Diners Have Yet to Show Up 🍽️

Ethereum's Sepolia test network activated the Glamsterdam upgrade on October 6, lifting its block gas limit to nearly 200 million from about 60 million, more than three times the ceiling currently in force on Ethereum's main network. The new limit was scheduled in a commit tied to epoch 353,024, a 6.4-minute time marker in Ethereum's calendar that began at 13:53:36 UTC. By early Thursday, October 8, blocks were being produced under the higher cap, according to a CoinDesk report.

The additional room has gone largely unused so far. A snapshot of 25 consecutive blocks on Etherscan taken on October 8, numbers 11,872,013 through 11,872,037, showed gas use of roughly 24% to 43% of the limit, while a separate sample cited by CryptoNews covered more than 25 consecutive blocks using about 52 million to 92 million gas, or 26% to 46% of the available allowance. In a separate six-minute period, all 32 scheduled blocks were produced, and 99.97% of eligible testnet stake voted toward finality. The threefold increase in the block budget does not directly translate into three times as many transactions because Glamsterdam also changes the gas charged for particular tasks, so the transaction count depends on the mix of activity and the revised costs assigned to it.

Gas measures the computing work required to process transactions, and a larger allowance is intended to accommodate more payments and trades before users compete to have their transactions included, which can push fees higher. Ethereum Foundation researchers had previously warned that limits above 40 million could "fail to propagate as expected" across the network, prompting a series of incremental increases. A 52%-to-48% validator vote in February 2025 moved the limit from 30 million to 32 million, the ceiling was later raised to 60 million during 2025, and the Fusaka upgrade, which went live on December 3, 2025, made that 60 million the mainnet default.

Two near-term roadmap items are meant to help the network handle more load. Block-level access lists record which accounts and data each block touches, allowing computers to verify many transactions at once rather than one by one. Enshrined proposer-builder separation moves the auction that decides who assembles each block, today run through outside middleware, into Ethereum's own rules. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sketched a longer arc in July, outlining a plan to replace almost every major piece of the protocol over three to four years, with Glamsterdam positioned as the nearer-term step toward a possible gas-limit increase toward roughly 200 million.

Hoodi, another public testnet, is tentatively planned for October 27 pending Sepolia results, and no date has been set for a corresponding mainnet upgrade, leaving Ethereum's main network at its 60 million gas limit for now. Sepolia is a practice network whose tokens carry no real value, and it previously staged the Merge rehearsal on July 6, 2022, when it switched to proof of stake ahead of the main network.