Ethereum: Vulnerability still threatens Amsterdam's schedule

Ethereum is still aiming to activate the Sepolia Test Network Glamstam on October 6

Ethereum is still planning to activate the "Glamstam" upgrade on the Sepolia Test Network at 13:53 UTC on October 6. That date now appears at the next milestone on the official Ethereum roadmap. However, the plan is still full of variables: Glamestead has not yet completed any full operational testing on the stable private development network (Devnet), and there are still several vulnerabilities that need to be fixed before exposing updates to Sepolia. The deployment plan for the main network is still scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026, and the specific date has not yet been confirmed.

Core Summary

• Glamestead targets October 6 of the Sepolia Test Network, but the date is still conditional.
• Devnet-9 has 1,000 verification nodes, but it still cannot achieve finalization correctly.
• A vulnerability related to EIP-8037 forces the execution layer client to modify its code.

Devnet-9 still faces obstacles before transitioning to Sepolia

Glamsterdam originally intended to use DevNet to eliminate such problems before reaching public networks. As early as spring, the project entered the advanced testing phase. Today, five months later, the scale of the test has expanded significantly. Glamsterdam-Devnet-9, launched on September 1, contains 1,000 verification nodes, making it the Glamsterdam-Devnet with the largest number of nodes to date.

However, the results have not yet met expectations: the network failed to correctly achieve the finalization. The number of verification nodes that propose and attempt to prove the same chain head is insufficient, resulting in the inability to reach a final consensus. Stefan Starflinger, DevOps engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, believes that this large-scale test mainly highlights marginal situations that are unlikely to occur in smaller configurations.

Prior to this, Devnet-8 has encountered more serious problems: in certain cases, when the block proposed by the verifier is the same as its expected parent hash, it may cause the network to freeze. The client team then worked to fix the issue. Therefore, Sepolia did not fail, but Glamestead had not been successful in previous tests.

EIP-8037 introduces new challenges to be solved

Another directly impacting vulnerability involves EIP-8037, which is one of Glamestead's main proposals. The EIP aims to change the pricing mechanism for creating new permanent data on Ethereum. The network wants to increase capacity without simultaneous database growth. EIP-8037 specifically introduces a separate accounting mechanism for certain costs associated with state creation.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Maria Silva discovered issues related to this EIP during testing. The fix requires updating all affected execution layer clients. As a result, Ethereum will have to conduct another round of testing. Developers are currently preparing Sepolia's previous new development network. According to reports, Devnet-10 is no longer the main step in this week's report schedule, and Devnet-11 has become a testing focus worthy of attention.

Parithosh Jayanti, who hosted the developer conference, did not guarantee an October 6 date. If the next development network still encounters major problems, the team will have to "assess case by case" to revisit the date. So October 6 is undoubtedly a goal, but it has not yet become a commitment.

Mainnetwork deployment is still aimed at the end of 2026, and no exact date is available.

Ethereum.org continues to show that Glamstam's deployment on the mainnetwork is in the fourth quarter of 2026, without specifying a specific date. At the same time, Sepolia officially emerged as the next milestone, with a date set for October 6.

After Sepolia, Hoodi still needs to move forward as the second public test net in the deployment plan. Similarly, developers tend to wait and see before setting a date. Enrico del Fante of Consensus had recommended waiting for a few more weeks before making a commitment to Hoodi. Problems encountered by Devnet-9 made precise schedules difficult to maintain.

This challenge goes far beyond a simple cryptographic hard fork. Glamstam must deeply modify the way Ethereum builds and verifies blocks. Its program notably includes ePBS (a built-in separation mechanism for block proposers and builders) and Block-Level Access Lists, designed to prepare for more efficient parallel processing.

The network is preparing for the next step. Currently, some progress is still possible in December. But Ethereum must first make a breakthrough on something theoretically simpler: a Glamsterdam development network that can cleanly achieve finalization. If Devnet-11 is successful, October 6 will still be within reach; otherwise, Sepolia may still have to wait.