Ethereum Test Network Raises Block Limit to Over 3x Its Current Capacity

Ethereum’s Sepolia test network activated the Glamsterdam upgrade on October 6 and began producing blocks with a gas limit of nearly 200 million, more than three times the 60 million that Ethereum’s main network allows. Gas is the unit that measures computing work on Ethereum, and the gas limit caps how much of that work fits into a single block.

The 200 million figure 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.

Blocks used only a fraction of that room. A snapshot of 25 consecutive blocks on Etherscan taken on October 8, numbers 11,872,013 through 11,872,037, shows gas use at roughly 24% to 43% of the limit.

A higher ceiling does not mean three times as many transactions, only that a block can hold more when demand shows up. For everyday users, that headroom is what helps keep fees from spiking when many people use Ethereum at once, because congestion feels like strangers outbidding each other to get into the next block.

Bigger blocks are harder on validators, the computers that put up ETH as collateral to check and confirm each block. Ethereum Foundation researchers had warned that limits above 40 million could “fail to propagate as expected” across the network, so the number has crept up in small steps.

One of those steps was a 52%-to-48% validator vote in February 2025 that moved the limit from 30 million to 32 million. The limit was later raised to 60 million during 2025, double the original 30 million, and the Fusaka upgrade, which went live on December 3, 2025, made that the default.

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Two changes on Ethereum’s roadmap are meant to help the network handle more load. Block-level access lists record which accounts and data each block touches, so computers can check many transactions at once instead of 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 the longer arc in July, when he described a plan to replace almost every major piece of the protocol over three to four years. Glamsterdam is the nearer-term step, and Ethereum developers describe a possible gas-limit increase toward roughly 200 million after it.

Sepolia is a testnet, a practice network whose tokens carry no real value, so developers can break things without costing anyone money. It also staged the Merge rehearsal on July 6, 2022, when it switched to proof of stake ahead of the main network.

The announcement sets no date for Hoodi, another public testnet, and schedules no mainnet upgrade, so Ethereum’s main network keeps its 60 million gas limit for now.