Ethereum Foundation Calls for Glamsterdam Delay Over Gas-Change Audit Risks

The Ethereum Foundation has asked core developers to hold off on deciding Glamsterdam's next step until outside audits of its proposed gas repricing changes are made public, according to research findings dated November 6, 2026. The recommendation follows four reports of live smart contracts that could break if the changes ship as written. As of November 10, 2026, no new date had been set for the Hoodi testnet fork that the guidance directly covers.

The fork had been planned for October 26, 2026, before audit concerns pushed it back. Hoodi is the step that would test Glamsterdam, Ethereum's next major network upgrade, on a practice network before mainnet deployment.

Which EIPs are causing concern?

The foundation's concern centers on two proposals: EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. Together, they change how much gas certain operations cost and how Ethereum charges for storing data, which the protocol calls state.

EIP-8037 makes creating new state significantly more expensive. Under the proposal, writing to a brand-new storage slot would jump from roughly 22,100 gas to 110,020 gas — a fivefold increase in a single operation's cost.

EIP-8038 revises what it costs to access and write existing state, including higher costs for cold new-slot SSTORE operations. The two EIPs work in tandem: one raises the price of state creation, the other adjusts charges for touching state that already exists.

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

What did the audits find?

The pause did not 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 subsequent reports from later audits pointed to already-deployed contracts that might be affected. That finding moved the issue from theoretical to specific — from patterns that could break to named instances of live code that would.

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

Why does Glamsterdam matter?

Glamsterdam is designed as a serious scaling upgrade for Ethereum's base layer. The plan calls for raising the gas limit from 60 million to 200 million, a roughly 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 — the gas changes under audit are the counterweight to the capacity increase, not a separate initiative.

What should builders do now?

For developers, the message is to check assumptions immediately. Any contract relying on fixed gas stipends or tight gas budgets around storage writes warrants 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 milestone to watch is publication of the outside audits, followed by how core developers respond on their regular calls. A new Hoodi fork date would be the clearest signal that the identified risks have been addressed.