Ethereum developers have postponed the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi test network after security researchers identified a potential issue that could change how existing smart contracts handle failed transactions.

The upgrade had been scheduled to activate on Oct. 26 at 17:42:48 UTC. Hoodi is one of Ethereum's public test networks, where upgrades are rehearsed before reaching the main network so developers can observe the new rules against live activity. Developers delayed it during Thursday's All Core Devs Execution meeting while they investigate how a proposed change to Ethereum's gas accounting would interact with contracts already running on the main network. No replacement date has been announced.

The issue centers on EIP-8037—an Ethereum Improvement Proposal, the standard format for changes to Ethereum's protocol—which changes how Ethereum charges for creating new records in its database. The proposal is intended to limit database growth as Ethereum increases the number of transactions its network can process.

Security firm ChainSecurity published an analysis on Oct. 13 indicating that EIP-8037, combined with EIP-8038, could change how contracts respond when another contract they call runs out of gas—the fees used to pay the network's operators.

Some contracts are designed to catch a failed operation and continue processing. They may record that an attempt failed, disable further attempts or proceed to another step. Developers sometimes rely on the remaining gas being insufficient for those actions to finish, causing the entire transaction to reverse instead.

Glamsterdam changes that calculation. Under the proposed rules, gas used to create certain records can be restored when those changes are undone. As a result, a contract could retain enough gas to complete a failure-handling operation that previously would have caused the transaction to reverse. In some cases, this could allow an error to become permanent.

ChainSecurity also identified a risk in the opposite direction. The firm 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 performing an otherwise valid operation.

The findings concern how existing software would behave under the proposed rules. ChainSecurity has demonstrated the mechanisms involved but has not publicly established that a major production protocol is exploitable. The postponement reflects the purpose of the testnet rollout: concerns raised ahead of mainnet activation can be addressed while the changes remain confined to test networks.

Glamsterdam includes several changes to Ethereum, including a new system for selecting block builders and improvements intended to allow the network to handle larger blocks. The upgrade completed activation on the Sepolia testnet on Oct. 6.

Hoodi was scheduled to serve as the next public rehearsal, alongside a planned increase in its gas limit to 200 million—the cap on total computation allowed in each block. That increase has also been postponed. Both changes now lack scheduled dates, with further decisions to be made in future All Core Devs Execution meetings.

Source: CryptoNewsNet