Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade hits the Hoodi brake 🛑

Ethereum core developers delayed the Glamsterdam upgrade’s implementation on the Hoodi testnet until security concerns tied to eight smart contract invariants are resolved, according to the Ethereum Foundation.

The delay follows an Oct. 13 report from smart contract auditor ChainSecurity, which found that EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 could break smart contracts that rely on fixed gas-related assumptions when external calls fail. Some existing Ethereum projects assume that certain operations will cost a specific amount of gas, but the proposals change how gas is charged for those operations.

Developers will use the additional time to identify potential smart contract issues and determine whether changes are needed before Glamsterdam progresses toward mainnet deployment. The Hoodi fork will not proceed until the issues are resolved, the Ethereum Foundation said.

Glamsterdam went live on the Sepolia testnet on Oct. 6 as the upgrade approached one of its final major rehearsals. The upgrade is intended to advance Ethereum’s layer-1 scaling roadmap through enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists and gas-pricing changes designed to better reflect execution costs, the Ethereum Foundation announced in a Sept. 28 blog post.