Ethereum could disrupt up to 200,000 smart contracts with its next Glamsterdam update. The developer banteg warns of the risks linked to the new rules for calculating gas, which could prevent certain existing contracts from functioning correctly. Two competing proposals were tabled on November 8 to avoid these problems. The Ethereum Foundation has already suspended a planned test of Hoodi.
In brief
- Around 200,000 smart contracts appear in a list of contracts potentially affected by Glamsterdam.
- Two developers offer different solutions to preserve their operation.
- The Ethereum Foundation is postponing testing on Hoodi until the identified issues are resolved.
Ethereum identifies a risk for 200,000 smart contracts
The alert is growing. On October 26, Ethereum had already postponed a Glamsterdam test after the discovery of risks on 13 contracts. Two weeks later, the developer banteg evokes a list of around 200,000 contracts potentially affected. This figure comes from a tool for analyzing the effects of new gas pricing. It does not mean that 200,000 contracts will necessarily fail.
Banteg even believes that the method used could miss other vulnerable contracts. The issue concerns two proposals incorporated into Glamsterdam: EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. The first modifies the cost of creating permanent data on Ethereum. The second increases certain costs linked to their consultation and modification.
Change is important. With EIP-8037, the base cost of creating a smart contract would increase from 32,000 to 183,600 gas units, before additional costs related to the code and its execution. Gas measures the computing resources necessary for operations carried out on Ethereum. Some old smart contracts were programmed with fixed limits. When they call another contract, they assign it a specific amount of gas.
If this quantity becomes insufficient after Glamsterdam, the operation may fail. The problem particularly concerns immutable contracts, the code of which cannot be modified after their deployment. Some DeFi protocols might encounter difficulties during their crypto transactions. Funds could also become temporarily inaccessible in certain scenarios. However, no such massive outages were observed on the main network.
Two developers offer competing solutions
Faced with concerns, Leo Glisic and Giulio Rebuffo presented two different approaches on November 8. The first, called EIP-8488, seeks to preserve the old rules for contracts already deployed.
Leo Glisic suggests creating two sets of instructions. Existing contracts would continue to operate with gas costs current. The new contracts would use instructions tailored to the rates introduced by EIP-8037 and EIP-8038.
The objective is to avoid modifying the execution conditions of historical applications. Giulio Rebuffo defends another method. His proposal provides for two gas meters for each crypto transaction. The first would track execution under the old rules, while the second would calculate the fees actually charged under the new rates.
Users would therefore pay the new costs, but the old contracts would maintain accounting compatible with their initial operation. This solution would require greater adaptation of Ethereum software.
Rebuffo acknowledges that no implementation in runtime clients or consensus testing has been done yet. Both proposals remain in draft form. No decision has been made regarding their integration into Glamsterdam.
The construction site arrives after several months of preparation. Ethereum had already activated Glamsterdam on the Sepolia testnet on October 6. The next pass was supposed to take place on Hoodi, but security researchers discovered new incompatibilities.
Glamsterdam will wait for issues to be resolved
The Ethereum Foundation made its decision official on November 6. Developers will not deploy to Hoodi until the risks related to the new gas rules have been resolved.
Cybersecurity companies ChainSecurity and Dedaub are participating in the checks. The Foundation also published a list of eight technical assumptions on which certain contracts are based and which could become invalid with Glamsterdam.
She asks developers and listeners to review their apps. Concerned projects can send their observations directly to Ethereum teams. The next private test had been planned between November 16 and 20, at the earliest. This timetable had, however, been discussed before the submission of the two new proposals.
No new definitive date has been announced. Deployment on the main network will depend on the fixes selected and the results of the next tests. Glamsterdam, however, pursues an important objective: to increase the capacity of Ethereum while controlling the growth of its database.
The update should in particular facilitate the parallel processing of transactions and improve the organization of block production. Work on Hegotá, the next update, continues in parallel.
For crypto developers, the immediate priority is the compatibility of already deployed applications. Ethereum is also preparing to increase its gas limit from 60 million to 200 million per block. This development could increase network capacity, but it must not compromise contracts that already secure funds. The next developer meetings will have to decide between the proposed solutions before restarting the tests.
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