# Ethereum's Platåberget Testnet Forks to Glamsterdam on August 20

The public network carries proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists, and a larger contract size limit, while researchers are still debating how to price the new data those access lists add to every block.

- Published: 2026-08-19T05:47:33.890Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/crypto/2026-08-19/ethereum-s-plat-berget-testnet-forks-to-glamsterdam-on-augus
- Publisher: Polylog (Crypto desk)
- Section: crypto
- Sources: [Polylog editors](https://polylog.news), [Ethereum Research](https://ethresear.ch/t/data-metering-bal-decomposition-and-bundle-pricing-under-eip-7999/25747), [Ethereum Foundation Blog](https://blog.ethereum.org/en/2026/08/18/allocation-q2-26), [Ethereum Research (PQ-DAS)](https://ethresear.ch/t/formally-verified-security-for-pq-das-leanda/25746)

The Ethereum Foundation launched Platåberget, a public testnet that lets developers and client teams run the first components of the Glamsterdam upgrade under live conditions, as [reported in French by Goku Crypto News](https://t.me/GokuCryptoNews/20401). The [foundation's announcement](https://blog.ethereum.org/2026/08/17/plataberget-testnet) says the network will stay up for at least several months, and the Glamsterdam fork on the testnet is scheduled for August 20. Mainnet activation is targeted for late 2026.

Glamsterdam is a major overhaul of how Ethereum blocks are produced, the biggest since the 2022 upgrade known as the merge. It introduces enshrined proposer-builder separation, specified in Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7732, and block-level access lists that declare in advance which state a block will touch, specified in EIP-7928, along with a rewrite of gas pricing and a rise in the contract size limit from 24 KiB to 64 KiB.

The economics are not settled. In a post on Ethereum Research, Fei Wu, who did the work during an internship at the Ethereum Foundation, [analyzes how block-level access lists should be metered](https://ethresear.ch/t/data-metering-bal-decomposition-and-bundle-pricing-under-eip-7999/25747) under EIP-7999, noting that EIP-7928 leaves those lists outside fee accounting entirely. Data that a block must carry but nobody pays for is a subsidy, and subsidies in a fee market get consumed by whoever can exploit them at the lowest cost.

The foundation's [second-quarter allocation update](https://blog.ethereum.org/en/2026/08/18/allocation-q2-26) shows where its money went over the same period: zero-knowledge proofs, client diversity, formal verification, and open-source tooling. That last category is visible in a separate research post presenting a [formally verified security argument for post-quantum data availability sampling](https://ethresear.ch/t/formally-verified-security-for-pq-das-leanda/25746), where the human author wrote the proof outline and translated it into the Lean theorem prover with substantial AI assistance. Ethereum's layer-2 ecosystem now secures $38.84 billion in total value, according to L2Beat, with Base at $10.98 billion and Arbitrum One at $10.13 billion, both slightly lower over the past seven days.

## What this means

Glamsterdam moves Ethereum's block-building market into the protocol itself, which changes who captures the revenue currently earned by external builders and relays. Validators, staking services, and the searcher firms that pay for ordering rights are all exposed through the same channel: proposer revenue. The unresolved metering of block-level access lists is the specific place where a mispricing would show up first, because unpriced data lets sophisticated block builders impose costs on every node without paying for them.

## What to watch

- Whether the August 20 testnet fork proceeds without a client split, the first real check on whether the specification is stable enough for a late-2026 mainnet date.
- How EIP-7999 resolves the metering of block-level access lists, since leaving that data outside fee accounting hands a free resource to whoever builds blocks.
- Whether layer-2 total value secured keeps drifting down while Ethereum's own DeFi total value locked holds at $41.72 billion, which would indicate activity consolidating back onto the base layer.