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Why Ethereum Paused Glamsterdam Over Smart-Contract Risks
As of November 6, 2026, Ethereum developers had paused Glamsterdam’s Hoodi testnet activation while investigating risks to existing contracts; 13 mainnet examples were reported, but these are potential post upgrade fa... The concern is that new state gas rules could invalidate contracts’ assumptions about gas budget...
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Key takeaways
- As of November 6, 2026, Ethereum developers had paused Glamsterdam’s Hoodi testnet activation while investigating risks to existing contracts; 13 mainnet examples were reported, but these are potential post upgrade fa...
- The concern is that new state gas rules could invalidate contracts’ assumptions about gas budgets and failure handling, potentially leaving some operations—including withdrawals—unable to complete.[19][41]
- The Ethereum Foundation is coordinating audits and asking project teams to check their own contracts; the cited updates give no new Hoodi activation date.[2][8][49]
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openai.comCreate a landscape editorial hero image for this Studio Global article: Why are prominent developers, including Curve Finance’s founder, urging Ethereum to halt the Glamsterdam upgrade in its current form, how co. Article summary: Developers are urging a pause because Glamsterdam’s gas changes could break already-deployed contracts—not merely make transactions more expensive—and potentially leave user funds inaccessible.[11] The confirmed response. Topic tags: general, general web, user generated. Style: premium digital editorial illustration, source-backed research mood, clean composition, high detail, modern web publication hero. Use reference image context only for broad subject, composition, and topical grounding; do not copy the exact image. Avoid: logos, brand marks, copyrighted characters, real person likenesses, fake screenshots, UI text, readable text, watermarks, charts with fa
Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade is on hold on the Hoodi testnet because proposed changes to gas accounting could make some existing smart contracts behave differently. The risk is not simply higher transaction costs: contracts that rely on specific gas assumptions may fail in ways their developers did not anticipate. The Ethereum Foundation said Hoodi will not fork until the issues are resolved.8
What EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 change
EIP-8037 raises the cost of creating state and introduces a separate way to account for those charges. EIP-8038 changes gas costs for accessing existing state. Together, the proposals alter how gas is charged for certain operations—rules that some deployed contracts may treat as predictable.20
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That matters because contracts can use gas limits and gas measurements to decide whether an operation succeeded, failed, or should be retried. A change in the amount or accounting of gas can invalidate those assumptions, particularly around external calls that fail.6
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How gas assumptions can affect contract behavior
- Fixed gas budgets: A contract may forward a set amount of gas to another operation based on what that operation used to cost. If the relevant state operation becomes more expensive, the forwarded budget may no longer be enough. The Foundation says some projects rely on gas-cost assumptions that the proposals would change.
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- Checks using
gasleft(): ChainSecurity explains thatgasleft()reports a frame’s execution-gas balance, while state-creation charges can also draw on that balance if the separate state-gas reservoir is exhausted. It cautions against relying on checks that infer why a call failed from the remaining gas: an intermediary revert or a gas refill can undermine that inference.19
- Failure handling: Reporting on the ChainSecurity findings says changed gas accounting could cause some contracts to record a failed operation permanently instead of reverting cleanly or allowing a retry.
41 If that logic blocks a withdrawal in a contract that cannot be changed, users could face inaccessible funds. That is a potential consequence—not evidence that a mainnet upgrade has already trapped funds.
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The Foundation refers to eight gas-related invariants, or assumptions, that some contracts may rely on. They are not eight universal failure modes affecting every Ethereum contract. The Foundation has published examples and prompts to help teams check their own code.2
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What ChainSecurity found—and what the number means
Ethereum.org reported that 13 mainnet examples had surfaced, while other coverage described 13 deployed contracts with potentially affected failure-handling logic.13
38 These examples show that the compatibility risk is not merely theoretical. They do not mean that 13 contracts have already failed: the concern is how they could behave if the proposed changes were activated.
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The available source details do not provide a complete, independently verifiable list of all 13 contracts or their failure traces. Nor should the eight invariants be treated as a guarantee that every contract has been checked.
How the Foundation is responding
The Ethereum Foundation’s November 6 update says it is working with ChainSecurity and Dedaub and conducting internal audits. It also asks developers and auditors to check whether their projects rely on the affected assumptions.8 The Foundation’s published materials include examples and self-check prompts, and a report relays the address
glamsterdam@ethereum.org for affected teams.2
Those reviews are paired with a call for project-level checks. A protocol-wide audit cannot establish that every application and its failure-handling logic is safe; teams need to test their own contracts against the changed gas rules.8
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Glamsterdam rollout status
Glamsterdam activated on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, according to reporting on the rollout.6 ChainSecurity published its gas-accounting analysis on October 13.
19 On October 22, the Foundation postponed Hoodi’s planned October 26 activation and said it had no replacement date at that time.
49 The postponement also included a planned increase of Hoodi’s gas limit to 200 million.
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On November 6, the Foundation confirmed that developers would not fork Hoodi until the identified risks were resolved.8 The current status is therefore a security-driven pause, not a newly scheduled activation. The available updates do not establish an emergency reversal fork as a recovery plan.
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What is the short answer to "Why Ethereum Paused Glamsterdam Over Smart-Contract Risks"?
As of November 6, 2026, Ethereum developers had paused Glamsterdam’s Hoodi testnet activation while investigating risks to existing contracts; 13 mainnet examples were reported, but these are potential post upgrade fa...
What are the key points to validate first?
As of November 6, 2026, Ethereum developers had paused Glamsterdam’s Hoodi testnet activation while investigating risks to existing contracts; 13 mainnet examples were reported, but these are potential post upgrade fa... The concern is that new state gas rules could invalidate contracts’ assumptions about gas budgets and failure handling, potentially leaving some operations—including withdrawals—unable to complete.[19][41]
What should I do next in practice?
The Ethereum Foundation is coordinating audits and asking project teams to check their own contracts; the cited updates give no new Hoodi activation date.[2][8][49]
Sources
ethereum.orgethereum.org