Ethereum Foundation urges delay on Glamsterdam upgrade pending gas audits

The Ethereum Foundation is pumping the brakes on Glamsterdam, the network’s next major upgrade. The foundation has asked Ethereum’s core developers not to decide the upgrade’s next step until outside audits of its proposed gas changes are made public.

The trigger was four reports of live contracts that could break if the changes ship as written.

What the foundation is worried about

The concern centers on two Ethereum Improvement Proposals, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. Together, they change how much gas certain operations cost and how the network charges for storing data, which Ethereum calls state.

EIP-8037 makes creating new state much more expensive. Writing to a brand-new storage slot would jump from roughly 22,100 gas to 110,020 gas under the proposal, according to the research findings.

EIP-8038 goes after a different piece of the puzzle, revising what it costs to access and write existing state, including higher costs for cold new-slot SSTORE operations.

The Ethereum Foundation said it is working through the four reports and contacting teams whose contracts could be affected. It did not name those teams.

Audits, invariants, and a postponed testnet

The pause didn’t come out of nowhere. On October 13, security firm ChainSecurity published a report identifying eight critical invariants that EIPs 8037 and 8038 could disrupt in existing smart contracts.

The four reports that followed from later audits pointed to already-deployed contracts that might be affected. That moved the issue from theoretical to specific.

The research findings date the foundation’s recommendation to November 6, 2026. The guidance specifically covers the Hoodi testnet fork, the step that would test Glamsterdam on a practice network before it reaches mainnet.

That fork had been planned for October 26, 2026, before audit concerns pushed it back. As of November 10, 2026, no new date had been set.

Ethlabs has backed the slower approach. It recommends delaying any decision on Glamsterdam until audit findings make the risks to live contracts clearer, stressing that immutable contracts need full audits before changes land beneath them.

Why Glamsterdam matters in the first place

The stakes are high because Glamsterdam is meant to be a serious scaling upgrade for Ethereum’s base layer. The plan calls for raising the gas limit from 60 million to 200 million, roughly a 3.3x increase in L1 capacity.

More throughput also means state can grow faster, and a bloated state makes running a node more demanding. Repricing state creation is one way to keep that growth in check while capacity expands.

What this means for Ethereum users and builders

For developers, the message is to check your assumptions now. Any contract relying on fixed gas stipends or tight gas budgets around storage writes is worth a second look, whether or not its team has heard from the foundation.

The open question is what happens after the audits go public. Developers could adjust the EIPs, add mitigations for vulnerable contract patterns, or proceed with affected teams forewarned. Each path carries a different timeline, and none has been chosen yet.

The next thing to watch is publication of the outside audits, followed by how core developers respond on their regular calls. A new Hoodi date would be the clearest sign that the risks have been addressed.