Ethereum developers postponed the Hoodi test of the Glamsterdam upgrade to examine gas changes that could affect how smart contracts handle errors.
The decision to postpone was made at Thursday’s developer meeting, before the Hoodi activation scheduled for October 26 at 17:42:48 UTC. No new test date was announced, and the plan to raise Hoodi’s gas limit to 200 million was also delayed.
An analysis by security firm ChainSecurity indicated that the gas rules proposed under Glamsterdam could change how existing smart contracts handle failed transactions. The risk could arise if EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, which change the cost of creating new database entries, are implemented together.
Gas changes in Glamsterdam could affect contracts
Some contracts can record an error and continue running when a transaction in another contract they call fails. Under the current rules, running out of gas before completing the error-handling step can cause the entire transaction to be rolled back. Under the proposed rules, recovering gas used by certain storage changes when they are rolled back could leave enough gas for a contract to record an error and continue after a failed call; this could cause some failed transactions to leave a permanent result rather than be rolled back.
In a separate scenario, ChainSecurity calculated that creating a new storage slot could require 110,020 gas when another gas allocation has been exhausted. The same operation cost 22,100 gas under the old rules; this difference could prevent a contract using its existing gas budget from completing a transaction that would normally be valid.
Glamsterdam was activated on the Sepolia testnet on October 6. Hoodi was set to be the next general rehearsal for the upgrade; the date for deployment on the Ethereum mainnet has not been finalized.
Not investment advice.