Ethereum's Glamsterdam gas changes face audit delay over contract risk

What happened

Ethereum's planned Glamsterdam upgrade is facing a new delay after the Ethereum Foundation received four reports identifying deployed contracts that could break under proposed gas-pricing changes. In a Nov. 9 blog update, Marius van der Wijden said the reports concern contracts that may fail under EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, which would alter the cost of certain operations and how the network charges for storing state. The foundation said it is reviewing the reports and contacting affected teams, which it did not name.

The foundation asked Ethereum's All Core Developers group not to settle the upgrade's next step until outside audits are public and reviewed. That guidance covers any specification revision and any new date for Hoodi, an Ethereum test network. Several possible revisions are already being prototyped. The reports give differing audit timelines: the foundation's schedule says ChainSecurity and Dedaub engagements end Nov. 13 with reports delivered and published, while Ethlabs said publication would come by Nov. 16. A testing-call agenda lists completion between Nov. 16 and Nov. 19. Auditors and the foundation are due to present findings on Nov. 16, followed by an execution-layer call on Nov. 19 that the foundation said has no decision committed in advance.

Two draft proposals have emerged as possible ways to reduce disruption. Crypto.news reported that Leo Glisic's EIP-8488 would create separate instructions for newly deployed contracts while letting older contracts keep their existing gas rules; new contracts would use V2 opcodes under the revised pricing. Giulio Rebuffo proposed two gas accounting systems inside each transaction, one calculating consumption under the previous rules and another calculating the actual fee under the new schedule. Neither proposal has been approved for Glamsterdam, and Rebuffo's draft notes that no execution-client implementation or consensus tests have been completed.

Ethlabs, which said it had spent more than two weeks monitoring and triaging reports, recommended on Nov. 10 that no decision be made until clarity is achieved. It said the issues are not currently exploitable and would apply only if Glamsterdam ships under its current specifications. If audits reveal problems on an unacceptable scale, Ethlabs said it would support specification changes or even a significant review of the upgrade's scope. The foundation has also asked contract developers to check their code against eight invariants in a public repository and report problems to a dedicated email address.

Why it matters

The concern is not abstract: many smart contracts are immutable after deployment and rely on fixed gas costs or on specific behavior when calls fail. EIP-8037 would raise the base gas charge for creating a contract from 32,000 to 183,600, excluding execution and code-storage costs, while EIP-8038 would change state-related charges. ChainSecurity identified eight assumptions in existing contracts that could become invalid, including fixed gas reservations for external calls and expectations about failed transactions. Pseudonymous developer banteg cited an analysis finding roughly 200,000 potentially affected contracts and warned that methodological problems could mean the real number is higher. Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov warned of another emergency hard fork, investor Ryan Berckmans withdrew his earlier support for rapid activation, and researcher pcaversaccio argued the upgrade should not ship in its current form. Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, speaking on Unchained's Uneasy Money, said Ethereum's cautious approach had value given the number of contracts to consider.

What the data shows

Key figures in the debate include the four reports received by the foundation, the eight contract assumptions identified by ChainSecurity, and the eight invariants listed for developers to check. EIP-8037's proposed contract-creation base charge would rise from 32,000 gas to 183,600 gas. Glamsterdam's proposed 200 million gas limit compares with 60 million today. Banteg's cited estimate of about 200,000 potentially affected contracts is not a confirmed count; the developer said methodology issues could make it larger. Audit dates also differ across schedules, with Nov. 13, Nov. 16 and Nov. 16-19 all appearing in published materials.

Background

Glamsterdam is Ethereum's next planned upgrade. It went live on the Sepolia testnet on Oct. 6, but developers scrapped a planned Oct. 26 Hoodi fork after ChainSecurity described how gas spent before a failed call could return under the new rules. The postponement covered the Amsterdam execution-layer changes, Gloas consensus changes and a planned increase in Hoodi's gas limit to 200 million. Glamsterdam would raise the per-block gas limit to 200 million, more than three times the current 60 million. In a Nov. 6 statement, van der Wijden said the foundation was working with ChainSecurity and Dedaub to examine affected applications and gather developer feedback. A private Glamsterdam test had been tentatively discussed for Nov. 16 to 20 at the earliest during an Oct. 29 developers' meeting.

What is still unclear

It remains unclear whether the audits will confirm that the gas changes are safe for live contracts, or whether they will force a narrower redesign. Also unresolved is whether either draft proposal will be adopted, what a revised specification would contain, and when Hoodi will receive a new fork date. The exact number of affected contracts and the severity of the risk to major protocols have not been independently established in the reports.

What to watch

The next signals are the Nov. 16 presentation of audit findings and the Nov. 19 execution-layer call, where the foundation says no decision is precommitted. Core developers could then choose a specification revision, a new Hoodi date or a broader scope review. Contract teams are also being asked to test their code against the published invariants and report possible breakage.

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