Ethereum developers have postponed the planned Glamsterdam hard fork on the Hoodi test network after auditor ChainSecurity identified security problems in changes to the way the blockchain charges for computing and storage-related activity. The activation had been scheduled for Monday, but no replacement date has been announced.
According to Decrypt, ChainSecurity said the issue could affect smart contracts that depend on a failed external call remaining failed. The firm said it had already identified 13 real-world examples and was contacting the projects involved through responsible disclosure, a process in which security findings are shared privately with affected parties before wider publication.
The Ethereum Foundation is assessing how many contracts could be exposed. In the meantime, developers and node operators have been told to remove Glamsterdam from the Hoodi upgrade schedule or wait for updated software from their execution-client teams.
Why the gas changes matter
Gas is the fee Ethereum users pay for the computing work required to process transactions and execute smart-contract instructions. Glamsterdam changes parts of that fee system through two proposals, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. It also creates a separate gas pool for adding new state, meaning new information to Ethereum’s stored network data.
ChainSecurity’s analysis found that the changes could undermine assumptions built into some existing contracts. These contracts may use gas checks, or rely on a call running out of gas, to ensure that an operation is rolled back rather than permanently recorded as unsuccessful.
That protection is relevant to a tactic known as insufficient-gas griefing. In such an attack, someone deliberately provides too little gas to make a valid operation fail. Under the planned changes, ChainSecurity said gas could be returned to, or replenished for, a contract after a failed call. Gas repricing could also alter the amount required for a call.
As a result, a failure path that previously reverted could instead finish under the same contract code. ChainSecurity warned that this could turn an operation designed to remain retryable into one that records a permanent failure. The firm has urged projects to review their contracts while the Ethereum Foundation works to determine the full scope of the exposure.
The Hoodi delay is a testnet decision rather than a mainnet launch cancellation. Test networks allow developers to identify compatibility and security problems before software changes are deployed on the production blockchain. In this case, the finding emerged before the scheduled Hoodi activation.
Glamsterdam’s path to mainnet
Hoodi is not the only Ethereum test network involved in the upgrade. Glamsterdam went live on Sepolia on October 6, which began producing blocks with a gas limit of nearly 200 million. That was more than three times Ethereum mainnet’s 60 million gas limit.
The upgrade includes other changes beyond gas accounting. It adds block-level access lists, which are intended to let computers check transactions in parallel. It also moves the auction that determines who assembles each block into Ethereum’s own protocol rules.
Ethereum developers had been targeting a mainnet release by the end of 2026. Glamsterdam is planned to come before Hegotá, the next upgrade, which is expected in 2027 and could introduce native privacy features. The Hoodi postponement means the testing schedule now requires further review, but developers have not provided a new date for that fork.
For Hoodi node operators, Ethereum researcher Christine Kim said the immediate options were to return to an older software release that does not include the scheduled upgrade or wait for their execution-client team to issue a version that cancels Glamsterdam’s activation. Preston Van Loon, a developer on the Prysm consensus client, said Prysm would release a corresponding update removing the fork from Hoodi’s schedule on the same day.
Current crypto market picture
Moneyiar market data at 08:14 on October 24, 2026, put Ethereum at $2,370.5257821182, down 1.4% over 24 hours and 2.51% over seven days.
Other assets in the supplied data were also lower over the latest 24-hour period:
- Shiba Inu was priced at $0.000004917, down 2.46% in 24 hours and 3.16% over seven days.
- Uniswap stood at $6.8353142021, down 5.34% in 24 hours and 6.27% over seven days.
- Pepe was priced at $0.0000044037, down 5.16% in 24 hours but up 10.29% over seven days.
These market figures describe prices and recent performance at the stated time; they do not indicate how markets will respond to the Hoodi testnet delay.
