Ethlabs Urges Ethereum to Delay Glamsterdam Over Audit Risks

Ethlabs is urging Ethereum core developers to postpone the Glamsterdam upgrade until pending audits are fully assessed, arguing that proposed gas accounting changes could break protections embedded in immutable smart contracts that hold user funds.

The call comes with Ethereum's testnet timeline already stalled. Hoodi remains on hold after core developers cancelled its Oct. 26 activation, and no replacement date has been set. The upgrade specification currently lists no mainnet activation date.

What is the dispute actually about?

At stake are changes intended to let Ethereum support larger blocks without overwhelming the computers that maintain the network's database. Ethlabs describes Glamsterdam's target as raising the block gas limit from 60 million to 200 million. Gas measures the computational work transactions consume; the proposed changes would also alter how that work is priced and accounted for.

Two proposals drive the controversy. EIP-8037 raises charges for creating persistent blockchain data and introduces a separate state-gas reserve. EIP-8038 raises costs for accessing and changing stored data.

ChainSecurity's analysis explains how those changes can undermine a contract's defenses against deliberately underfunded calls. A contract may catch a failed call and record a permanent failure. Under the proposed accounting, returned gas or the separate reserve can let that failure-handling code finish executing where it previously would have run out of gas and rolled back — potentially removing a user's ability to retry.

How serious is the risk?

Ethlabs draws a careful line between ordinary repricing, which it considers necessary for scaling, and accounting changes that produce unforeseen behavior. It says the risks concern deployment under Glamsterdam's current specifications, not problems that can be exploited today.

The concern is sharpest for immutable contracts, whose code cannot be updated once deployed. Curve founder Michael Egorov warned on Nov. 7 that proceeding with the upgrade in its current form could require an emergency reversal. "I am sure, it can be made without breaking immutable contracts which hold funds," he wrote.

Immutable contracts holding funds are exactly the category DeFi depends on — lending pools, automated market makers and vaults where no party can patch the code if accounting assumptions shift underneath it.

What happens next?

Ethlabs says "the onus remains on protocol developers to convince application developers of the safety of the upgrade." It urges application teams to check their code against the Ethereum Foundation's gas-invariant checklist and report issues to [email protected], extending a contract review previously reported by The Defiant.

The Foundation's published schedule is tight:

• ChainSecurity and Dedaub audit reports land Nov. 13
• An open developer Q&A is set for Nov. 16
• Findings and possible next steps go to All Core Developers Execution on Nov. 19

That three-meeting sequence is now the effective decision window. If the audits confirm ChainSecurity's preliminary findings and core developers decline to adjust the accounting model, application teams with immutable contracts would face a stark choice between opposing the upgrade or accepting permanent changes to failure handling they cannot fix.

A delay precedent already exists — Hoodi's cancelled Oct. 26 activation shows developers will pull dates when confidence drops. The Nov. 19 All Core Developers Execution call is where the next call on Glamsterdam's calendar, or its postponement, will likely be made.