Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade Targets 200 Million Gas Limit Ahead of Q3 Launch

Ethereum News

Ethereum (ETH) is weeks away from Glamsterdam, its first major base-layer throughput overhaul since 2022 and the largest network change since The Merge. The upgrade rewrites how the network assembles blocks and, according to developer estimates, lifts the gas limit from roughly 60 million to about 200 million, a threefold jump. Projected throughput reaches up to 10,000 transactions per second, with gas fees potentially 78 percent lower. Devnet-5 and Devnet-6 are already live, and an internal mainnet target sits in late August, though Q3 2026 remains the realistic window after the ePBS delay. As an altcoin catalyst, it is drawing surprisingly little attention.

The muted reaction is remarkable given how far the price has fallen. Ethereum trades near $1,730, a level last seen in March 2023, after shedding 65 percent from its August 2025 record. That drawdown carries the hallmarks of a deep bear market phase, with a nine-month downtrend pressing the price against its final major support band. Social interest has collapsed even as the protocol prepares its most consequential technical change in years, leaving one of the sector's largest assets trading near multi-year lows just as a fundamental throughput upgrade approaches mainnet.

On-chain data reveals a sharp divergence between usage and price. The 30-day moving average of active addresses holds near 450,000, the same band recorded in August and September 2025, when ETH traded above $4,500 at its cycle peak near its all-time high. Network activity peaked around 740,000 addresses in February 2026 and remains historically elevated despite the roughly 65 percent price decline. In other words, real settlement demand has decoupled from valuation, a pattern that suggests underlying utility has not deteriorated in step with the token's market performance over the past year.

Positioning data shows some traders betting aggressively on a rebound. On-chain records show one wallet recently opened a $19.9 million ETH long using 20x leverage, with a liquidation price sitting only about $50 below its entry, an unusually thin buffer. Analysts have warned that unliquidated longs already dominate major assets, making such stretched, high-leverage bets exceptionally fragile in a fast-moving tape. A move of just a few dollars against that position would force closure, underscoring how crowded and precarious the long side has become as speculators try to front-run any upgrade-driven recovery near the lows.

Glamsterdam arrives alongside Vitalik Buterin's Lean Ethereum roadmap, a broader design push that targets fees more than 10 times lower over the longer term. The roadmap has drawn pushback over its timeline, with critics questioning whether the proposed execution schedule is achievable without compromising decentralization. Together, the two efforts frame a period of intense protocol-level ambition, mechanisms like the reworked block-building pipeline and the fee-reduction agenda aim to reset Ethereum's cost and scaling profile. Whether markets reward that engineering work before delivery lands remains the open question hanging over ETH's second-half narrative.

Price structure keeps the near-term picture cautious. ETH bounced from the major demand zone at $1,500 and pushed back toward the $1,850 resistance, yet the recovery stalled beneath a long-term descending trendline that has capped every rally since last year. The token trades below both its 100-day and 200-day moving averages, with the 200-day positioned near $2,200. A decisive daily close above $1,850 could open a path toward the $2,000 to $2,200 supply zone, while losing the $1,500 support would expose the market to a much deeper leg down.

COINOTAG's proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine rates the $1,710 support at 76/100 (STRONG), driven by the confluence of the EMA 20 and Fibonacci 0.214 retracement, while the immediate $1,732 resistance scores 71/100 from a Pivot Point and R1 cluster. Derivatives read constructively but crowded, our aggregate open interest stands at $6.43 billion with a positive 0.0027 percent funding rate and a 2.24 long/short account ratio (69.2 percent long). With the Fear and Greed Index at 20 (Extreme Fear) and RSI at 49.45, a reclaim of $1,830 would validate the bullish case, whereas a break below the $1,512 support would invalidate the thesis and confirm downtrend continuation.