Rival Fixes Emerge to Protect Ethereum Apps From Glamsterdam Gas Price Hikes

Ethereum’s next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, could cause some live apps holding user funds to stop working. Two proposals inside it, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, raise the gas fees for creating and accessing stored data. Under the first, the base cost of deploying a contract jumps from 32,000 gas to 183,600 before storage and execution charges. Many older apps were built assuming those costs would stay fixed, so a call that suddenly costs more can fail. Plenty of these contracts cannot be updated once deployed.

Two Competing EIP Proposals to Protect Existing Contracts

Developer Leo Glisic filed EIP-8488, which splits the instruction set in two. Contracts already on the network keep the old gas schedule, while newly launched ones must use the new pricing. Giulio Rebuffo took a different route. His draft charges everyone the new rates but runs two gas meters per transaction, so older apps keep executing under the previous rules. He admits no client implementation or consensus tests have been run on it. Both are early drafts with no target date.

Security Researchers Warn About Broken Smart Contracts

Test Delays and Developer Concerns

A second test network rehearsal planned for October 26 was postponed after researchers raised alarms. Security researcher pcaversaccio said the upgrade should not ship in its current form. Developer banteg pointed to a public list of about 200,000 affected contracts and argued the real number is higher, with several high profile protocols hit as well. The next private test is estimated for November 16 to 20 at the earliest, and it was scheduled before either fix was proposed.