TLDR
- Two developers filed rival proposals on November 8 to stop Glamsterdam from breaking existing smart contracts.
- About 200,000 contracts could be affected by new gas pricing rules, researchers say.
- Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov warned of a possible emergency hard fork.
- Investor Ryan Berckmans reversed his support for a fast Glamsterdam launch.
- A private test was tentatively discussed for November 16 to 20 at the earliest.
A growing number of Ethereum developers and investors are urging caution on the network’s next major upgrade, Glamsterdam. Two developers filed rival proposals on Sunday, November 8, to keep the upgrade from breaking smart contracts already in use.
The concern centers on new gas pricing rules. Security researchers say roughly 200,000 existing contracts could be affected, including some that hold user funds and cannot be updated.
Voices Calling for a Pause
Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov posted a direct appeal on X. “Please don’t break the chain,” he wrote, warning that Glamsterdam in its current form looked likely to lead to “another emergency hard fork back, with a lot of drama.”
Dear @ethereum – please don’t break the chain.
It does look like Glamsterdam in the current form would lead to another emergency hard fork back, with a lot of drama.
I am sure, it can be made without breaking immutable contracts which hold funds https://t.co/jQCMSdGsyb
— Michael Egorov (@newmichwill) November 7, 2026
Ethereum investor Ryan Berckmans changed his stance after reviewing the risks. He had first backed moving ahead quickly, arguing that Ethereum could not promise unchanged gas prices for every app.
“We should (clearly, now) not continue towards Glam activation asap. I was wrong to say so,” Berckmans wrote on X.
We should (clearly, now) not continue towards Glam activation asap. I was wrong to say so.
I since learned that the problem is essentially worse than is generally understood (incl by me).
We have an urgent need for more people to write more things with data in *public* on this.
— Ryan Berckmans ⟠ (@ryanberckmans) November 7, 2026
Security researcher pcaversaccio went further. “imho Glamsterdam should not be shipped in its current form, period,” the researcher wrote, adding that the gas increases had been flagged to core developers about two weeks earlier.
Pseudonymous developer banteg said a public analysis had already listed about 200,000 affected contracts. The developer said flaws in the method could mean many more were missed, and that several high profile protocols were exposed.
The Gas Changes and Two Proposed Fixes
The issue comes from two proposals in Glamsterdam, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. They raise the gas Ethereum charges for creating and accessing stored data on the blockchain.
Gas is the fee that prices each step a smart contract takes. Under EIP-8037, the base charge to create a contract would rise from 32,000 gas to 183,600, before code storage and execution costs.
Many apps were built on the belief that these costs would stay fixed. Some set aside a fixed amount of gas when calling another app, so a price rise could cause those calls to fail. Security firm ChainSecurity found eight such assumptions that could break.
Leo Glisic’s proposal, EIP-8488, would split Ethereum’s instruction set in two. Existing contracts would keep the old gas schedule, while new contracts would have to use “V2” opcodes that carry the new pricing.
Giulio Rebuffo’s draft takes a different path by running two gas meters in each transaction. One tracks execution under the old rules, so contracts see what they expect, while the other sets the actual fee using the new prices.
Rebuffo’s draft states that no execution client implementation or consensus tests have been run for the design. Neither proposal has been approved for Glamsterdam, and neither names a target date.
Developers postponed the October 26 Glamsterdam activation on the Hoodi test network after the security warnings. The delay covered the Amsterdam execution layer changes, the Gloas consensus changes and a plan to raise Hoodi’s gas limit to 200 million.
On November 6, Ethereum Foundation developer Marius van der Wijden said the foundation was working with ChainSecurity and Dedaub to review affected apps. The team is also collecting feedback from developers.
At an October 29 meeting, developers tentatively discussed a private Glamsterdam test for November 16 to 20 at the earliest. That schedule was set before either of the two new proposals was filed.
