Summary

  • Glamsterdam, Ethereum’s next upgrade, is raising concerns that EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 could cause smart contract malfunctions and transaction failures.
  • Anonymous developer Vanteg said about 200,000 smart contracts could be affected and argued that service disruptions are possible.
  • Developers have proposed fixes including EIP-8488, but the plans remain in draft form, leaving compatibility issues and the risk of upgrade delays subject to further review.

Forecast Trend Report by Period

Ethereum developers have proposed fixes after concerns emerged that the network’s next upgrade, Glamsterdam, could cause existing smart contracts to malfunction.

CoinDesk reported on Nov. 9 that Ethereum developers Leo Glisic and Giulio Rebuffo each submitted new proposals a day earlier to address compatibility issues facing existing applications under the Glamsterdam upgrade.

At the center of the debate are EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, both included in Glamsterdam. The proposals would raise gas costs for creating smart contracts and storing data. Under EIP-8037, the base gas required to create a smart contract would increase to 183,600 from 32,000.

The problem is that some existing smart contracts were designed around current gas costs. If they are set to use only a fixed amount of gas when calling other contracts, transactions could fail after the increase takes effect. For smart contracts that cannot be modified after deployment, that could lead to service disruptions.

The second Glamsterdam test, scheduled for Oct. 26, was postponed after security researchers raised concerns about the impact on existing contracts. An anonymous developer known as Vanteg said about 200,000 smart contracts may already be affected and that the actual number could be larger.

Glisic responded by proposing EIP-8488, which would keep current gas fees for existing smart contracts while applying higher rates only to new contracts. Rebuffo, by contrast, proposed applying the new fee structure to all transactions while allowing existing smart contracts to run under the previous rules, effectively operating two gas-calculation systems in parallel.

Both proposals remain in draft form, and no decision has been made on whether or when they will be adopted. Rebuffo’s proposal, in particular, has yet to undergo execution-client implementation or consensus testing.

Ethereum developers had expected to conduct the next private test as early as Nov. 16-20, but that timeline was discussed before the two proposals were submitted. Further review will likely be needed as developers work through the upgrade’s compatibility issues.

Suehyeon Lee