Ethereum developers have postponed the planned activation of the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi test network after security researchers warned that proposed gas-accounting changes could affect how existing smart contracts handle failed operations. The delay removes the next scheduled public rehearsal for the upgrade while developers investigate the interaction between the new rules and contracts already deployed on Ethereum.
Why the Hoodi test was delayed
The Glamsterdam upgrade had been scheduled to go live on Hoodi on Oct. 26 at 17:42:48 UTC. Developers canceled that activation during Thursday’s All Core Devs Execution meeting after reviewing research into two proposed Ethereum Improvement Proposals, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038.
No replacement date has been announced. The planned increase in Hoodi’s gas limit to 200 million has also been postponed, and Ethereum does not yet have a confirmed date for activating Glamsterdam on its mainnet.
Hoodi is a public test network, or testnet, used to rehearse changes before they are considered for Ethereum’s production network. A delay at this stage gives developers time to examine whether new protocol rules could change the behavior of software that was written under earlier assumptions.
The issue does not mean that existing contracts are currently being exploited through Glamsterdam. The proposed rules have not been activated on Ethereum’s mainnet, and ChainSecurity has demonstrated the relevant mechanisms without publicly establishing that a major production protocol is exploitable.
How the proposed gas changes could affect contracts
The main concern involves EIP-8037, which changes the way Ethereum charges for creating new records in its database. The proposal is intended to limit database growth as the network expands its transaction capacity. EIP-8038 is also part of the interaction examined by the researchers.
Ethereum uses gas to measure the computational work and storage-related activity required to process transactions. Users pay for that work, and smart contracts can be written to respond differently when an operation runs out of gas or when the available amount is insufficient to complete a task.
ChainSecurity published its analysis on Oct. 13. It found that the proposed changes could alter what happens after one contract calls another contract and that call fails because it runs out of gas or because the fees needed to pay network operators are unavailable.
Some contracts are deliberately designed to catch a failed operation and continue. They might record the failure, prevent another attempt or move to a different stage of processing. In other cases, developers rely on the remaining gas being too limited for those follow-up actions to finish. That limitation can cause the entire transaction to reverse instead.
Under Glamsterdam’s proposed rules, gas used to create certain database records could be restored when the related changes are undone. As a result, a contract might have enough remaining gas to complete a failure-handling action that would previously have caused the broader transaction to reverse. This could make an error permanent in a contract whose behavior depends on the earlier gas calculation.
The researchers also identified a risk in the other direction. ChainSecurity calculated that creating a new storage slot could require 110,020 gas when a separate allowance is exhausted, compared with 22,100 gas under the old rules. A contract operating within an existing gas budget could therefore fail while attempting an operation that would otherwise have been valid.
What happens next for Glamsterdam
The postponed Hoodi activation follows Glamsterdam’s Sepolia testnet activation on Oct. 6. Hoodi was intended to be the next public rehearsal and was also meant to test the larger 200 million gas limit.
Glamsterdam includes several changes beyond the gas-accounting proposals. The upgrade is also designed to introduce a new system for selecting block builders and to improve Ethereum’s ability to process larger blocks. Those components now remain part of a testing process whose next Hoodi date has yet to be set.
The developers’ decision highlights why upgrades are tested on public networks before a mainnet release. Smart contracts are programs that can continue operating for long periods after deployment, and changes to the underlying network can affect assumptions embedded in their code. In this case, the question is not whether the contracts were originally written incorrectly, but whether their existing gas-related behavior would remain the same under the proposed protocol rules.
Until the investigation is complete, there is no confirmed schedule for the next Hoodi test or for Glamsterdam’s mainnet activation. According to CoinDesk, developers are examining how the proposals interact with contracts already running on Ethereum’s main network. The available findings point to a compatibility and design issue under proposed rules, rather than a reported live exploit.
Ethereum market picture
Moneyiar market data at 08:03 on Oct. 24, 2026, showed Ethereum at $2,371.6867878548, down 1.18% over 24 hours and 2.45% over seven days.
Other tracked cryptoassets were also mostly lower at the same time:
- Shiba Inu was priced at $0.0000049208, down 2.46% in 24 hours and 3.05% over seven days.
- Uniswap stood at $6.8458431305, down 5.45% over 24 hours and 6.18% over seven days.
- Pepe was at $0.0000044181, down 4.59% over 24 hours but up 10.55% over seven days, according to Moneyiar data at 08:04 on Oct. 24, 2026.
These market figures describe prices and recent changes at the stated times; they do not establish a connection between the upgrade delay and the assets’ performance.
