Ethereum developers offer safeguards for Glamsterdam gas changes

Leo Glisic and Giulio Rebuffo submitted competing proposals on Sunday, November 8, after security concerns prompted delays to Glamsterdam testing. Some deployed contracts rely on fixed gas costs; changing them could cause transactions to fail or disrupt applications that cannot be updated.

Glisic’s EIP-8488 would give newly deployed contracts a separate set of instructions using V2 opcodes and the revised pricing in EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. Older contracts would keep their existing gas rules. Rebuffo’s draft instead proposes two gas-accounting systems for each transaction: one would assess consumption under the old rules, while the other would calculate the fee under the revised schedule. Rebuffo said the design has not yet undergone execution-client implementation or consensus testing. Neither proposal has been accepted for Glamsterdam.

The underlying changes affect charges for creating and accessing blockchain state. EIP-8037 would increase the base gas charge for creating a smart contract from 32,000 to 183,600, before additional execution and code-storage costs. Security firm ChainSecurity identified eight assumptions in existing contracts that could be invalidated. Pseudonymous developer banteg said an analysis had found about 200,000 potentially affected contracts, and that methodological problems could put the real figure higher. The risks may extend to established protocols and applications holding user funds.

Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov warned on X that Glamsterdam, in its current form, could lead to an emergency hard fork. Investor Ryan Berckmans, who had initially backed moving ahead, later said he was wrong to support rapid activation. Security researcher pcaversaccio also argued the upgrade should not ship in its current form.

Ethereum developers postponed the October 26 Hoodi activation amid the warnings. The delay covered Amsterdam execution-layer changes, Gloas consensus changes and a planned increase in Hoodi’s gas limit to 200 million. Ethereum Foundation developer Marius van der Wijden said on November 6 that the foundation was working with ChainSecurity and Dedaub to assess affected applications and gather developer feedback. A private test for November 16 to 20 had been tentatively discussed at an October 29 meeting, before the competing proposals were submitted.