Ethereum Foundation warns Glamsterdam gas repricing may affect some smart contracts

The Ethereum Foundation has warned smart contract developers that planned gas repricing in Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade may affect a small group of existing contracts.

The changes are set out in EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, which revise gas costs associated with state creation and state access. The Foundation said historical mainnet transaction replays identified contracts that could fail or exhibit changed behavior under the proposed schedule.

The risk is concentrated in contracts that depend on hardcoded gas assumptions, including fixed gas stipends, fixed call-gas values, gasleft()-based logic, and transactions submitted with fixed gas limits.

According to the Foundation, most smart contracts are not affected. It said most of the flagged issues can be resolved by increasing gas limits, while urging developers to test relevant applications on the Glamsterdam devnet before the upgrade reaches mainnet.

What EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 change

Glamsterdam’s repricing work includes EIP-8037, which proposes higher and separately metered gas costs for state creation. The proposal is intended to address state growth and support scaling.

EIP-8038 changes the cost of several state-access operations. These include SSTORE, SLOAD, cold account access, EXTCODESIZE, and EXTCODECOPY.

The proposed changes reflect broader Ethereum protocol work around the costs imposed by creating and accessing blockchain state. Related protocol priorities have also been outlined by the Ethereum Foundation in its longer-term planning.

Which contracts may be affected

The Foundation’s replay testing found a small set of contracts whose execution may no longer fit within their existing gas assumptions. A contract can be affected even when its business logic is unchanged if a revised operation cost causes an internal call or transaction to run out of gas.

The guidance specifically identifies patterns involving fixed gas stipends, hardcoded call-gas values, conditional behavior based on gasleft(), and fixed transaction gas limits. These designs can be sensitive to changes in Ethereum’s gas schedule.

For affected contracts, the Foundation said the expected remedy will often be to raise the gas limit. Developers should nonetheless test contract behavior rather than assume a higher limit will address every case.

• Review contracts that forward a fixed amount of gas to another call.
• Check logic that changes behavior according to gasleft().
• Test workflows that use fixed gas limits for transactions or automated execution.
• Verify state-creation and state-access paths on the Glamsterdam devnet.

Testing before mainnet activation

The Ethereum Foundation advised developers to test potentially affected contracts on the Glamsterdam devnet before mainnet activation. This allows teams to identify gas-sensitive execution paths under the revised pricing model and make changes where needed.

The warning is narrowly focused on compatibility with the proposed gas schedule, not on a general failure risk across Ethereum applications. The Foundation said most smart contracts are unaffected, but developers responsible for older or gas-constrained contract designs may need to review their deployments.

The changes also sit within Ethereum’s wider effort to manage state growth and improve scaling-related protocol design, including work connected to a more stateless network model.

Continue reading: Ethereum Foundation’s longer-term protocol priorities on BTCNews.

Continue reading: Ethereum’s work toward a more stateless future on BTCNews.

Sources

• Ethereum Foundation Blog: Glamsterdam Repricing Impact for Smart Contract Developers
• Ethereum Improvement Proposals: EIP-8037: State Creation Gas Cost Increase
• Ethereum Improvement Proposals: EIP-8038: State-access gas cost update
• Ethereum Improvement Proposals: EIP-7773: Hardfork Meta – Glamsterdam

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