Ethereum at the end of the year is worth looking forward to. Glamsterdam is bringing some impressive upgrades, one of which aims to gradually approach the low fees and high throughput capabilities of current Ethereum Layer 2s like Robinhood/Base. Imagine achieving the capabilities of today’s L2s while maintaining the security level of Ethereum L1. This could potentially spark a new wave of interest in Ethereum L1, making the end of this year or early next year very exciting (considering Ethereum mainnet launches are always delayed). Breaking it down further: The target for the Glamsterdam mainnet is Q4 2026, with the Sepolia testnet fork tentatively scheduled for October 6. After that comes Hoodi, and then the mainnet decision, with the exact date still TBD. Why will L1’s processing power improve significantly? - **ePBS (EIP-7732):** Proposer-builder separation is written into the protocol, extending the propagation window from ~2 seconds to ~9 seconds, allowing for larger blocks. - **Block-Level Access Lists (EIP-7928):** Blocks will pre-declare which accounts/storage slots they’ll touch, paving the way for parallel prefetching and parallel execution. - **Gas limit target:** Increasing from the current ~60M to 200M (a 3x+ increase). This upper limit is already being tested on testnets. - **Fee repricing:** Some analyses suggest that simple transfers/common calls could see fees drop by around 78% (assuming demand doesn’t spike proportionally). This means Ethereum’s evolution could look like this: After Glamsterdam, L1 could attract “a batch of mid-to-high-frequency, mid-to-low complexity applications that currently can only run on L2,” while still retaining L1’s settlement and security attributes. L2s like Base/Robinhood, with their ultra-low fees and ultra-high throughput, won’t be completely overshadowed. L2s can continue to benefit from data availability, parallel execution, and specialized optimizations. The likely evolution is that some applications with high requirements for latency, atomicity, and composability may reconsider deploying directly on Ethereum L1. At the same time, L1 itself could become a “worth deploying” environment again, rather than being seen solely as a settlement layer. For ETH at the end of this year, this is definitely something to keep an eye on.