Ethereum node operators now have access to an active public testnet for rehearsing the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, which coordinates execution- and consensus-client changes. Platåberget features an open, permissionless validator set, serving as a practical trial to verify whether client pairs, validators, builders, and supporting infrastructure remain fully compatible and functional under the new upgrade.
Maintained by ethPandaOps, the test network launched on August 13 and is expected to remain live and accessible until the Glamsterdam upgrade is deployed on the Ethereum mainnet.
While application-level testing, including decentralized applications, smart contracts, and other EVM-based operations, is directed to the Sepolia testnet, Platåberget is specifically designed to focus on client software, staking configurations, block builders, and underlying infrastructure.
What Ethereum Operators Need to Test
According to the Glamsterdam roadmap, node operators will need to deploy compatible client releases for both components of an Ethereum node.
The execution client is responsible for processing transactions, whereas the consensus client tracks validators and agrees on the chain state. Platåberget provides client-pair images, along with resources for checkpoint syncing and deposits, and tools to test builder and fork-choice behavior under network load.
The most significant architectural change in this upgrade is EIP-7732, also known as enshrined proposer-builder separation. This proposal separates consensus-block validation from execution-payload validation, introduces staked builders, and establishes a Payload Timeliness Committee to monitor and report whether a builder has submitted its payload on time.
Ethereum developers state that this design expands the roughly two-second critical path: the next proposer is given six seconds to validate a payload, while other validators receive nine seconds. Operators must exercise builder onboarding, payload timing, and fork-choice behavior under the new division of duties, alongside standard uptime checks.
Review-stage EIP-7928 introduces block-level access lists that record the accounts and storage locations touched within a block. This map allows clients to parallelize disk reads, transaction validation, state-root calculation, and state reconstruction.
While its immediate value lies in providing a dependency map for parallel processing, the realized throughput will ultimately depend on individual client implementations.
EIPs 2780, 8037, and 8038 are listed as scheduled for Glamsterdam and are currently being tested, with all three proposals remaining in the Review stage.
Platåberget’s public documentation provides an 18,000-gas example for a plain ETH transfer. However, the current EIP-2780 reference case totals 21,000 execution gas for a transfer to an existing externally owned account—consisting of a 12,000 base fee, a 3,000 cold-recipient access charge, and a 6,000 value charge. This indicates that making a blanket promise of cheaper ordinary transfers is premature.
The state-creation proposal charges 183,600 state gas for creating a new account, while the state-access proposal raises the cost of a storage write from 2,800 to 10,000. Development teams need to recheck hardcoded subcall gas limits, cached estimates, refund-dependent flows, and workloads that create accounts or storage, including minting mechanisms, airdrops, and factory contracts.
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