Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade reshaped how validators manage balances. The next upgrade, Glamsterdam, will materially improve exit liquidity.
The proposals included in Glamsterdam address two areas of particular interest to institutional stakers: the architecture of block building, and the speed at which validators can exit large staked ETH positions. In this post, we break down the Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that matter most to stakers, what each one changes in practice, and what you’ll need to do when Glamsterdam goes live.
What is Glamsterdam?
Glamsterdam consists of “Gloas” referring to changes on the Consensus Layer (CL), and “Amsterdam” to changes on the Execution Layer (EL).
The upgrade is outlined in EIP-7773 and encompasses a broad set of protocol improvements.
The Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs):
EIP-7773: Glamsterdam Meta EIP:
CL:
- EIP-7732: Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation [headliner]
- EIP-7688: Forward compatible consensus data structures
- EIP-8045: Exclude slashed validators from proposing
- EIP-8061: Increase exit and consolidation churn
- EIP-8070: Sparse Blobpool
- EIP-8080: Let exits use the consolidation queue
EL:
- EIP-7928: Block-Level Access Lists [headliner]
- EIP-2780: Reduce intrinsic transaction gas
- EIP-7708: ETH transfers emit a log
- EIP-7778: Block gas accounting without refunds
- EIP-7843: SLOTNUM opcode
- EIP-7904: General Repricing
- EIP-7954: Increase Maximum Contract size
- EIP-7976: Increase Calldata Floor Cost
- EIP-7981: Increase Access List Cost
- EIP-7997: Deterministic Factory Predeploy
- EIP-8024: Backward compatible SWAPN, DUPN, EXCHANGE
- EIP-8037: State Creation Gas Cost Increase
- EIP-8038: State-access gas cost increase
- EIP-7975: eth/70 – partial block receipt lists
- EIP-8159: eth/71 – Block Access List Exchange
When will Glamsterdam launch on mainnet?
Testing on Glamsterdam has begun but there is no clear timeline for the mainnet fork. A reasonable estimate is Q3 2026. Time estimates are best guesses at the time of writing. Actual mainnet launch date for Glamsterdam may vary greatly.
What should stakers know?
While many of these changes affect applications, network infrastructure, and gas economics, three EIPs most directly impact validators and institutional stakers.
These three EIPs are: EIP-7732, EIP-8061, and EIP-8080.
EIP-7732: Bringing proposer builder separation onchain
Today, validators who want to outsource block construction to specialized builders (and capture more of the MEV in each block) do so through MEV-boost, a sidecar piece of software that is connected to relays.
Validators trust relays to release payloads on time; builders trust them not to take advantage of their access to the payload.
What EIP-7732 changes: EIP-7732, known as enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), formalizes a new type of block builder directly into the Ethereum protocol. These onchain builders are permissionless — anyone meeting an ETH collateral requirement can participate — and they operate without the relay intermediary.
What stakers need to know: The existing MEV-boost and relay setup continues to function exactly as it does today — there is no forced migration. The new ePBS builder market is strictly opt-in. When implementation details are finalized, participation could appear as a configuration flag on the validator client. Stakers will opt into the new market as a whole — selecting individual ePBS builders is not expected to be an option, based on current specifications.
Why it matters for institutional stakers: A more competitive, trust-minimized builder market could be positive for the variable execution layer (EL) component of staking rewards. More competition among builders generally means better block optimization over time. The near-term impact will depend on adoption rates and how quickly the new market matures. Figment will monitor ePBS builder activity closely and will publish a dedicated deep dive on ePBS as implementation details are finalized ahead of the upgrade.
For more on how execution layer and consensus layer rewards differ and what drives variability in each, see Execution Layer Rewards vs. Consensus Layer Rewards: A Guide for Institutional Ethereum Stakers.
EIP-8061: Significantly faster exit processing
The exit churn limit determines how much ETH can exit the active set per epoch. Currently, that limit sits at 256 ETH, a conservative figure that, arguably, is more restrictive than necessary from a security perspective.
With the current exit churn limit,queues build up quickly in periods of high exit demand. Toward the end of 2025, Ethereum saw a significant spike in exit queue length as validators sought to exit a large amount of ETH related to a security incident.
What EIP-8061 changes: EIP-8061 ties the exit churn limit to the total amount of ETH currently staked, using a calculation similar to the pre-Pectra approach. Based on approximately 38.9M ETH staked, the revised formula produces an exit churn limit of roughly 1,187 ETH per epoch. That’s approximately 4.6x larger than the current limit.
Importantly, the churn limit will grow as total staked ETH grows, so the actual figure at the mainnet fork will likely be higher than today’s estimate.
A similar recalculation applies to the consolidation churn limit, increasing it from approximately 338 ETH per epoch to 593 ETH per epoch (a ~1.75x increase).
Why it matters for institutional stakers: For large institutional stakers, a significant exit can already take days — and that delay carries both direct and operational costs. More importantly, periods of high exit demand weigh on all stakers that need liquidity. This proposal will drastically decrease the exit queue for those wanting to unstake ETH. EIP-8080: Exit queue flexibility for all validators.
Following Pectra’s introduction of consolidations, some operators discovered an unintended workaround to the exit queue: by consolidating a validator into an 0x02 validator that was already at its max effective balance of 2,048 ETH, they could bypass the exit queue entirely. Any ETH sent to a validator at its maximum effective balance is automatically swept to a withdrawal address. The result was a faster effective exit — but only accessible to operators with at least 2,048 ETH.
What EIP-8080 changes: Rather than removing this capability, EIP-8080 democratizes it. Ethereum will automatically evaluate both the exit queue and the consolidation queue for any given exit request, and route the exit through whichever is faster at that moment — no minimum balance required.
Why it matters for institutional stakers: When EIP-8061 and EIP-8080 work together on a large batch of exit requests, the total processing time drops dramatically:
| Current | Post-Glamsterdam | Change | |
| Exit churn limit (ETH/epoch) | 256 | ~1,187 | ~4.6x |
| Exits via consolidation churn limit (ETH/epoch) | 338 | ~890 | ~1.75x |
| Combined exits + consolidation queue capacity | 256 | ~2,077 | ~8.1x |
Note that exits going through the consolidation queue use up only ⅔ of capacity due to the difference in treatment between exits and consolidations from a weak subjectivity perspective. That is why the churn limit in the table for exits using the consolidation capacity is 890; 1.5 times the 593 ETH / epoch churn limit for a true consolidation.
The estimates above are based on approximately 38.9M of ETH staked as of April 2026. Churn limits scale with total staked ETH and will likely be higher by the time of the mainnet fork. All figures should be treated as speculative until the upgrade is live on mainnet.
For large, concentrated exit requests, the kind that institutional operators are more likely to encounter, the combined improvement is the most relevant figure. What might have taken weeks to clear the exit queue under current conditions could be processed in a matter of days post-Glamsterdam.
What to Expect Before and After the Upgrade
Glamsterdam continues Ethereum’s methodical development trajectory, addressing trust assumptions in the block builder market, and the practical limitations of the current exit queue under high demand.
For institutional operators, significantly faster exit processing reduces one of the more operationally consequential risks in staking, the cost associated with longer time-to-liquidity.
To discuss how Glamsterdam may affect your ETH staking strategy, meet with our team. As a final note, until the fork is implemented on mainnet all of the above information should be treated as speculative.
