Ethereum developers have postponed the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi testnet due to concerns regarding smart contract compatibility. The activation originally scheduled for October 26th, as well as the plan to increase the gas cap to 200 million, have both been canceled.

According to a announcement from the Ethereum Foundation on October 22, this decision was made after discussions at the All Core Developers Execution meeting. Developers agreed to first investigate the interaction between EIP-8037 and the existing mainnet contracts. The foundation has not yet announced a new testnet activation date.

The upgrade of Glamsterdam on Hoodi has been postponed.

This upgrade was originally scheduled to be activated at 17:42:48 on October 26th UTC, corresponding to epoch 132,352 of Hoodi. Developers have removed Amsterdam for execution layer activation and Gloas for consensus layer activation from the revised configuration.

This postponement also cancels the original plan to increase the upper limit of gas for Hoodi to 200 million. Developers had hoped to test this adjustment along with other protocol changes. However, the foundation clarified that this adjustment affects future network upgrades and will not roll back the existing transaction history of Hoodi.

This decision has changed the previously announced schedule of Hoodi. crypto.news reported on the relevant arrangements on October 19th. The activation of this test network was originally intended to allow developers to test how the execution layer and consensus layer clients handle the changes to Glamsterdam before determining the mainnet date.

Ethereum researcher Christine D and Kim remind node operators that the activation scheduled for October 26 has been canceled. They suggest that operators revert to a suitable older software version or install an updated version of the client that does not include this upgrade plan.

ChainSecurity points out that there are risks associated with the changes to Ethereum gas.

This postponement is due to concerns regarding EIP-8037. The proposal introduces a separate accounting method for the gas consumed when creating blockchain states. Another proposal, EIP-8038, changes the cost of accessing existing states.

In a technical assessment on October 13th, blockchain security company ChainSecurity warned that these proposed changes could affect the way deployed smart contracts handle failures of external calls. Some applications use the remaining gas balance to determine whether an operation is a permanent failure or can still be attempted again.

Under the proposed rules, a failed operation might leave enough gas that allows the calling contract to continue executing within the same transaction, which otherwise should be rolled back. ChainSecurity warns that such behavior could result in some applications recording a single failed operation without allowing users to retry.

The security company subsequently discussed their findings on X, and related reports mentioned that there were 13 actual cases of contracts that may have been affected. The researchers have not yet publicly identified these affected applications, and the responsible disclosure process is still ongoing.

At the same time, these concerns relate to batch transactions, withdrawals, and other contract mechanisms that rely on failure handling rules. The technical assessment indicates that failures caused by insufficient gas may interfere with existing protective measures, without the need to modify the deployed contract code.

Hoodi Node operators have received the updated client guidelines.

After the extension, the Ethereum Foundation requested that operators check their execution layer and consensus layer software by October 26th. If clients still retain the original activation configuration, they must update it to avoid attempting to execute any forks that were previously planned.

The updated release list from the foundation lists the consensus layer versions Lodestar and v1.50.1. The execution layer versions include Besu 26.10.1 and Nethermind 2.2.1. Ethrex and v30.0.1-rc.2 are available in a pre-release form, while the details for other clients are still to be confirmed.

Verifier operators must check both their beacon nodes and verifier clients, including any external block construction infrastructure. The foundation warns that the versions listed in previous Hoodi announcements should not be considered as confirmed to support this extension.

The activation of Glamsterdam on Ethereum on Sepolia was completed on October 6th, allowing developers to observe the performance of this upgrade under a higher gas limit. The postponement of Hoodi relates to another test network and will not affect the previous activation on Sepolia.

The upgrade date for Ethereum's mainnet is still not determined.

Before this postponement, developers had discussed December 1st, December 8th, and December 9th as possible dates for the activation of the Glamsterdam mainnet. The agenda of the meeting on October 22nd suggested that if the Hoodi tests went smoothly, a date would be chosen for next week.

None of these dates have been finally confirmed, and the latest announcement from the foundation does not provide an alternative schedule either. Developers must continue to work on resolving these compatibility issues before they can announce a new activation time for Hoodi.

Glamsterdam includes embedded proposer-builder and block-level access lists. These changes are aimed at enhancing Ethereum's transaction processing capacity.

Previously, Curve Finance emphasized the potential benefits of these changes for DeFi, while also warning that the revised gas fees might affect some applications.

The Ethereum Foundation confirms that mainnet users and holders of ETH do not need to take any action due to this delay. Application developers are requested not to continue scheduling tests for Hoodi around the canceled activation on October 26th.