The Ethereum Foundation has warned that the upcoming Glamsterdam gas repricing could cause some smart contracts to fail unless developers update them.

EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 will raise and standardize gas costs for state creation and access across Ethereum. Developers can test contracts on Glamsterdam devnets, while wallets and RPC providers will need to update gas estimation for the new schedule.

Ethereum developers are facing new gas rules under the planned Glamsterdam upgrade, and some contracts may stop working without changes. The Ethereum Foundation said EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 will change the costs of state creation and access. Most contracts are expected to remain unaffected, but developers who rely on hardcoded gas assumptions may need to update their code before the repricing reaches mainnet.

Because these changes affect how core EVM operations are priced, the practical impact depends less on broad application type than on specific gas assumptions buried in contract logic and tooling. That makes testing important for teams that have not revisited old constants since earlier network upgrades.

Glamsterdam Changes Ethereum Gas Costs

The two EIPs focus on how Ethereum charges for state operations across the network. EIP-8037 will increase and standardize the costs of creating accounts, storage slots, and deployed bytecode.

EIP-8038 will raise the costs of accessing existing state, including SLOAD, SSTORE, and cold account access. It also changes the costs of EXTCODESIZE and EXTCODECOPY operations.

According to the Ethereum Foundation, these changes reflect the measured workload of operations on Ethereum's larger state. Gas prices for these operations were last changed during the 2021 Berlin upgrade.

Recent gas limit increases have accelerated state growth, the Foundation said. The new pricing model uses a performance target that supports roughly three times higher base throughput.

Some Smart Contracts Could Fail

The Ethereum Foundation replayed historical mainnet transactions using the proposed gas schedule. Most transactions produced the same outcome under the new pricing rules, but a smaller group showed different results after the repricing.

Some transactions still succeeded but consumed different amounts of gas. Others failed only because their original gas limits were no longer sufficient. Developers can address those cases by increasing the supplied gas limit.

A smaller group could remain broken even with substantially higher limits. These contracts often rely on fixed gas assumptions in their code. Examples include Solidity's 2,300-gas transfer and send stipends.

Hardcoded call values, gasleft() checks, and fixed gas limits can also create problems. The Foundation said teams behind the most affected contracts are already receiving direct outreach.

Developers Can Test Before Mainnet

Developers maintaining Layer 1 contracts can search the affected-contracts database using their contract address. The tool identifies failure types and the repricing responsible for each issue.

The Foundation also advised developers to test fixes on the Platåberget testnet, known as glam-devnet-8. Wallet and RPC developers must update gas estimation to reflect the new schedule.

Cached gas constants could otherwise underestimate transaction costs and lead to failures. Regular users do not need to take any action, as updated wallets and infrastructure will handle the changes.

The repricing is already live on devnets and will move to public testnets before mainnet activation.