Ethereum (ETH) Developers Schedule Glamsterdam Hoodi Testnet Activation for October 26 at 17:42:48 UTC

Hoodi Activation on October 26

Hoodi testnet node operators are the first party that has to move: before the Glamsterdam upgrade can go live, every execution and consensus client on the network must carry the new fork logic, and the Ethereum (ETH) Foundation has now fixed the moment. According to the Foundation's October 16 announcement, Glamsterdam activates on Hoodi on October 26, 2026, at 17:42:48 UTC. The run follows Sepolia's October 6 release and marks the next stage of testing for the upgrade. Hoodi's block gas limit will rise to 200 million, the same ceiling Sepolia already carries, widening the capacity available for testing transaction processing at scale. Glamsterdam embeds two protocol-level changes: proposer-builder separation, known as ePBS, which formally splits block proposal from block construction, and block-level access lists, or BAL, which let transactions be verified in parallel rather than one after another. Both changes are aimed at raising throughput on Ethereum's layer 1. Parallel verification is where the gain comes from, since a single block can contain thousands of state accesses that today are checked in sequence. Execution and consensus software are separate stacks, and an operator who skips the update falls out of consensus and stops producing or accepting blocks. The upgrade also reprices the gas fee for creating state and for accessing stored data, a shift that changes how smart contract operations are costed across the network. Developers will validate the changes on the test network before taking them to the next step, and only after a clean rehearsal does the mainnet conversation move forward. The mainnet activation date is not set, and the Hoodi run is explicitly not a mainnet launch. Markets moved ahead of the code: the Ethereum (ETH) price gained 2.76% over the past 24 hours as the broader altcoin market advanced.

43.8 Million ETH Staked

Bitwise's October 20 report put the staking base at an all-time high of 43.8 million Ethereum (ETH) at the end of September, equal to 35.9% of total supply; we broke the figure down when Ethereum staked supply hit a record. Third-quarter net inflows added 1.99 million ETH, the sixth consecutive quarter of growth in staked balances, while the annualized yield slipped to 2.63% from 2.81% in the prior quarter, a small cost that has done nothing to slow participation. A base this large turns client coordination into a systemic matter: each of those deposits sits behind a validator running both an execution and a consensus client, and software that misses the Hoodi deadline stops following the chain. The wider tape backed the move: total crypto market capitalization rose 2.49% over the same period to $2.79 trillion, with major tokens higher. Bitcoin (BTC) recovered modestly toward short-term strength, and XRP held near flat after a gain of more than 2% the day before. Ethereum's own session followed the recent short-liquidation push past $2,450 and has now carried the asset into $2,500 resistance, a zone where prior trading clustered repeatedly, which makes it the first major test on the way up. A four-hour close above the barrier opens the path to $2,600. The nearest support is $2,400; a sustained break below would put the $2,320–$2,350 band back in play, and a deeper slide would bring $2,300 into the conversation. Momentum indicators support the recovery: the MACD line sits at 4.51 above the signal line at -3.41 with a histogram of 7.92, while the relative strength index at 59 holds above 50. Our Ethereum technical analysis tracks these levels as they update.

Our reading is that Hoodi is the rehearsal that forces the mainnet problem into the open at a manageable scale. With 35.9% of supply staked, an upgrade is no longer a client-team exercise; it is a coordination task spread across hundreds of thousands of operator setups, and the October 26 deadline gives each of them a hard date to update execution and consensus software. The party that has not moved yet is the mainnet itself: no activation date exists, and one will likely wait until Hoodi runs cleanly at a 200 million gas limit. For readers tracing how these forks reshape the chain, From Ethereum 1.0 to 2.0 covers the precedent. Until the date lands, the $2,500 test tells us whether the market treats Glamsterdam as progress or as risk.