- Ethereum’s Hoodi upgrade remains indefinitely delayed following the cancellation of its scheduled October 26 activation, with core developers yet to establish a new timeline.
- Technical scrutiny surrounds EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 under the Glamsterdam roadmap, which alter state gas accounting and block gas limits from 60 million to 200 million.
- Security research by ChainSecurity and warnings from Curve founder Michael Egorov indicate that the current specifications could disrupt immutable contracts handling live funds.
Ethereum Core Developers Put Hoodi Activation on Indefinite Hold
The rollout of Ethereum’s Hoodi upgrade remains stalled after core protocol developers formally cancelled its planned October 26 activation date. At present, no replacement date has been finalized, and the official upgrade specification currently designates no target for mainnet activation. The core tension centers on the architectural modifications bundled under the broader Glamsterdam roadmap, which aims to scale network throughput by expanding the block gas limit from 60 million to 200 million while preventing the exhaustion of node hardware managing Ethereum’s state database.
Gas functions as the core operational metric that measures computational effort across Ethereum transactions. Beyond simply increasing capacity limits, the proposed upgrades modify the fundamental structure of how computational work and storage are accounted for and priced across the network. Ethlabs has distinguished standard gas repricing—a mechanism long viewed as essential for layer-1 scaling—from structural accounting adjustments that have introduced unexpected and unintended execution dynamics across smart contracts.
EIP-8037, EIP-8038, and the Threat of Broken State Handling
The technical contention primarily involves two key Ethereum Improvement Proposals: EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. EIP-8037 increases costs for generating persistent on-chain state data and deploys an isolated state-gas reserve. Concurrently, EIP-8038 elevates the computational costs associated with accessing and mutating existing stored state. While drafted to align state expansion costs with node operational constraints, detailed technical assessments indicate unintended ripple effects on smart contract security invariants.
An audit and analysis conducted by blockchain security firm ChainSecurity revealed that these accounting mechanisms could impair smart contracts designed to defend against deliberately underfunded execution calls. In many standard decentralized architectures, a smart contract catches an out-of-gas or failed sub-call and subsequently logs a permanent failure state. Under the newly proposed rules, returned gas or execution headroom supplied by the newly introduced state-gas reserve could allow failure-handling routines to finish executing in circumstances where they historically would have reverted entirely due to lack of gas. Consequently, this state transition can finalize an error permanently, depriving users of the ability to reattempt their transactions.
Risks to Immutable Smart Contracts
Ethlabs emphasized that these vulnerabilities represent theoretical and design-level risks under the present Glamsterdam specification, rather than active exploits targeting existing mainnet contracts today. Nonetheless, the issue presents a severe dilemma for immutable smart contracts, which possess fixed logic that cannot be upgraded, patched, or migrated without user intervention or complete protocol re-deployments.
Decentralized finance stakeholders have strongly cautioned against pushing forward with the architectural changes without resolving these underlying contract behaviors. On November 7, Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov cautioned that activating the network changes in their existing design framework could force an emergency network reversal down the line. I am sure, it can be made without breaking immutable contracts which hold funds,
he wrote regarding the path forward.
Why This Matters
This technical impasse highlights the delicate balance between layer-1 throughput expansion and application-layer backward compatibility. As layer-1 networks seek higher capacity to compete with modular ecosystems and alternative high-speed chains, altering foundational gas mechanics carries the systemic risk of breaking live decentralized applications holding billions in capital.
Addressing the division between client engineers and application architects, Ethlabs stated that the onus remains on protocol developers to convince application developers of the safety of the upgrade.
In response, engineering teams across the ecosystem have been encouraged to assess their contract logic against the Ethereum Foundation’s gas-invariant checklist and submit findings directly to glamsterdam@ethereum.org, broadening the ongoing contract evaluation program.
The Ethereum Foundation’s governance timeline outlines several vital checkpoints to chart the path forward. Formal analytical reports from ChainSecurity and Dedaub are scheduled for release on November 13. This review will be followed by an open developer Q&A session on November 16, with the compiled findings and procedural next steps slated for comprehensive deliberation during the All Core Developers Execution call on November 19.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why was the Hoodi upgrade cancelled on October 26?
The activation was postponed because proposed changes to state gas pricing and execution accounting under the Glamsterdam roadmap—specifically EIP-8037 and EIP-8038—were found to alter the behavior of existing smart contract failure handling, posing operational risks to immutable protocols holding user capital.
What do EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 aim to achieve?
The two proposals aim to facilitate larger block gas limits (targeting an increase from 60 million to 200 million gas) without overloading client databases. EIP-8037 introduces a dedicated state-gas reserve and increases the costs of creating persistent data, while EIP-8038 increases fees for accessing and modifying existing stored state.
What are the immediate next steps for the Ethereum ecosystem?
Technical evaluations from ChainSecurity and Dedaub are scheduled for November 13, followed by a community developer Q&A on November 16. The Ethereum All Core Developers Execution meeting on November 19 will review these findings to decide how to adjust the specifications before establishing a new activation timeline.
