Ethereum Developers Postpone Glamsterdam Testnet Upgrade After Security Review

Ethereum's next major upgrade is taking a pause after security researchers flagged a potential problem.

What happened

Developers postponed the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi test network, which had been set to activate on Oct. 26, CoinDesk reported. The decision came during Thursday's All Core Devs Execution call. A planned increase of Hoodi's gas limit to 200 million was also put on hold, and no new date has been set.

The concern

Security firm ChainSecurity published research on Oct. 13 showing that two proposals, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, could change how existing smart contracts behave when an operation they call runs out of gas. Some contracts rely on a failed step reversing the whole transaction. Under the new gas rules, some contracts could end up with more gas than expected, allowing a failure to be recorded permanently, or with less, causing valid operations to fail. In one example, creating a new storage slot could cost 110,020 gas versus 22,100 under current rules.

CoinDesk noted that ChainSecurity has shown how the issue could arise but has not shown that any major live protocol is exploitable, and there is no sign of current exploitation.

Context

Glamsterdam includes a new system for choosing block builders and changes meant to support larger blocks. It went live on the Sepolia testnet on Oct. 6. Mainnet timing remains unconfirmed.

Why it matters for crypto

The delay may push back Ethereum's scaling plans, but catching compatibility risks on a testnet, before mainnet, is the purpose of the testing process.