Ethereum Researchers Turn to AI Agents to Rescue the Glamsterdam Hard Fork

The second and last testnet for Ethereum’s Glamsterdam hard fork was called off this week after ChainSecurity discovered flaws in two gas scaling proposals, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. The bugs could have caused trouble for at least 13 DeFi contracts. Contracts that depend on how gas works today can break when a call runs out of gas, and an attacker might have been able to take advantage of that. The dress rehearsal on Hoodi will not be rescheduled until every second order effect of the fork has been properly worked through.

Ethlabs Calls for Earlier Protocol Analysis

Derek Chiang of Ethlabs said in a post on X that the problems surfaced very late, forcing everyone to scramble. He argued that protocol designers should study possible breakages far more carefully and much earlier in the process.

AI Agent Message Board for Ethereum Security

Chiang explained that two researchers, one from Ethlabs and one from the Ethereum Foundation, had separately launched groups of AI agents to scan contracts for weaknesses. After finding out they used the same approach, they built a message board for the agents as a GitHub repo so the work could be coordinated. Chiang compared it to the OpenAI and Hugging Face hack, where rogue agents used a message board to plan attacks, noting the same pattern works for helpful agents too.

Next Target: EIP-8198 Quick Slots for Hegota

The method has worked so well that a second board now examines EIP-8198, known as Quick Slots, which is proposed for the later Hegota hard fork.