Two competing draft proposals emerge to address potential smart contract failures in Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade, which threatens to break 200,000 existing applications due to sharp gas fee increases.
Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade would raise the contract-creation charge from 32,000 to 183,600 gas under EIP-8037, risking failures in up to 200,000 affected contracts that cannot be updated. Security concerns already forced a postponement of the Oct. 26 testnet rehearsal, and the two rival fixes, EIP-8488 and Rebuffo's draft, are unimplemented drafts with no target date. Prolonged uncertainty and delay around the network's next major upgrade weigh on confidence in ETH, though the risk is to a future upgrade rather than to the current chain.
Ethereum developers are scrambling to address risks posed by the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, which could break up to 200,000 existing smart contracts. Proposed gas fee hikes under EIP-8037 would raise contract creation costs from 32,000 to 183,600 gas, threatening apps that cannot be updated. Two rival draft proposals, EIP-8488 and a design by Giulio Rebuffo, aim to mitigate these failures, though neither has a target implementation date.
Possibly: gas costs for creating and touching stored data would rise sharply (contract creation from 32,000 to 183,600 gas), and apps that pay fixed gas amounts and cannot be updated could see their calls fail. Around 200,000 affected contracts have been listed, and one researcher says the true number is higher.
No. Two competing draft proposals exist: one keeps legacy gas rates for existing contracts, the other charges new rates but uses separate accounting so old apps keep running. Neither has an implementation, consensus tests or a target date.