Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade gas changes could break smart contracts, developers warn

Ethereum core developers face intense pushback over the proposed Glamsterdam upgrade, specifically EIP-8037 state-gas repricing rules designed to curb state growth. Prominent developers warn that raising storage creation costs—such as increasing cold storage slot gas from 22,100 to 110,020—could break over 200,000 immutable smart contracts and lock user funds. Following security warnings that postponed the Hoodi testnet release, the Ethereum Foundation issued an urgent call on November 6, 2026, requesting projects to test gas invariants and report repair options.

Smart contract vulnerabilities from proposed gas changes

• ▪Proposed INV-8 rules for EIP-7702 delegation mean pre-execution gas failures can roll back nonce updates while keeping block inclusion, exposing valid authorizations to front-running and unauthorized contract ownership initialization
• ▪ChainSecurity's October 13, 2026 research indicates that changed state gas costs can cause a contract to record an underfunded operation as permanently unsuccessful, removing its retry path
• ▪EIP-8037 raises gas costs for creating persistent state data, causing immutable smart contracts with fixed gas budgets or gas introspection checks to run out of gas and potentially lock user funds permanently
• ▪Under EIP-8037, transactions with gas limits exceeding 16,777,216 fund a separate state-gas reservoir, causing Solidity's gasleft() function to exclude reservoir spending and break transaction relayer reimbursement calculations

Calls to halt or review Glamsterdam upgrade

• ▪On November 6, 2026, Ethereum Foundation developer Marius van der Wijden published an appeal asking application developers and auditors to evaluate eight gas invariants and report repair options for affected smart contracts
• ▪On November 7, 2026, Ethereum community advocate Ryan Berckmans reversed his prior support for immediate activation of the Glamsterdam upgrade, stating the community failed on design and due diligence regarding gas opcode repricing

Glamsterdam Gas mechanics and proposals

• ▪Under the Glamsterdam upgrade proposal, creating a cold storage slot increases from 22,100 gas under Osaka to 110,020 total gas, comprising 12,100 execution gas and 97,920 state gas
• ▪An open specification proposal, PR #12581, would prevent gas readings from increasing to address transaction subtraction issues under EIP-8037

Evaluating Glamsterdam gas changes

• ▪Ethereum core developers are evaluating proposed gas repricing changes in the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade under EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 to control node state growth while supporting higher throughput
• ▪Security auditing firm Dedaub is investigating gas-related risks in the proposed Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade alongside ChainSecurity and internal audits

Glamsterdam activation schedule and delays

• ▪A November 6, 2026 appeal from the Ethereum Foundation indicated that mainnet activation for the Glamsterdam upgrade remains unset
• ▪The planned October 26, 2026 activation of the Hoodi testnet with a 200 million gas-limit increase was postponed on October 22, 2026 pending resolution of security and gas accounting issues