Ethereum core developers have called off the October 26 activation of the highly anticipated Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi test network after a security audit revealed that new fee-accounting rules could accidentally break live smart contracts. By catching a flaw that threatened at least 13 real-world contracts on the main network before the code ever touched user funds, researchers averted a potential decentralized finance disruption while keeping Ethereum stable near 2,317 USD.
By Keisha Williams | October 26, 2026
The Hook: Why a Cancelled Dress Rehearsal Protects Your Crypto
If you hold Ethereum (ETH)—currently trading at 2,317 USD alongside Bitcoin (BTC) at 80,116 USD and Solana (SOL) at 101 USD—the best news you can hear about a major software upgrade is that engineers found a hidden trap before your money was ever put at risk. Today, October 26, 2026, was supposed to mark the final major dress rehearsal for Ethereum’s next flagship overhaul, known as the Glamsterdam upgrade, on the Hoodi test network.
Instead of flipping the switch, Ethereum core developers and the Ethereum Foundation hit the brakes. According to official announcements on Ethereum.org, engineers agreed during their All Core Developers Execution call 248 to postpone the October 26 Hoodi activation indefinitely and strip the scheduled launch date from node software configurations.
The reason for the sudden pause comes down to a critical warning from blockchain auditing firm ChainSecurity. In an October security disclosure reported by The Defiant and ForkLog, auditors demonstrated that two technical proposals bundled inside Glamsterdam—EIP-8037 and EIP-8038—change how the network measures transaction fees in a way that could cause older, already-deployed smart contracts to malfunction. Rather than rushing ahead to meet a calendar deadline, developers chose to protect the existing ecosystem and rethink the rollout.
On-Chain Evidence: Inside the EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 Gas Trap
To understand what ChainSecurity uncovered, it helps to think of Ethereum like a giant global computer with a shared hard drive. Every time a user deploys a new app, opens a wallet account, or writes fresh data onto the blockchain, that shared hard drive grows larger. Over time, this expansion—which engineers call “state growth”—makes it harder and slower for everyday computers to run Ethereum validator nodes.
The Glamsterdam upgrade (which blends execution-layer updates called Amsterdam with consensus-layer updates called Gloas) was designed to raise the Hoodi test network’s transaction capacity to a 200 million gas limit while keeping that hard drive growth under control. Two specific proposals were tasked with balancing the load:
- EIP-8037 (State Creation Gas Cost Increase) — Raises the fee required to write brand-new data onto Ethereum’s shared hard drive and introduces a separate accounting bucket called a “state-gas reservoir” to track those storage costs independently from normal computing fees.
- EIP-8038 (State-Access Gas Cost Update) — Increases the fee for looking up and reading older stored data so that transaction pricing matches the real-world effort required by validator hardware.
- The “Out-of-Gas” Reversal Trap — According to ChainSecurity, separating storage fees into a new reservoir changes how leftover fees are refunded when part of a complex transaction fails.
- At Least 13 Mainnet Contracts Flagged — Auditors identified at least 13 live smart contracts on the Ethereum main network whose built-in safety checks rely on the old fee rules to handle failed transactions safely.
Here is why that matters in plain English. On Ethereum today, smart contracts cannot predict exact transaction fees ahead of time because developers are constantly adjusting network prices. To protect users, many decentralized finance (DeFi) apps and payment bundlers are programmed with a safety net: if an automated payout or sub-transaction runs out of gas midway through, the contract catches the error, cleanly undoes the step, and lets the user try again later with a slightly higher fee limit.
ChainSecurity proved that under EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, a failed step can return a different amount of leftover gas to the parent contract than it used to. Instead of triggering a clean, retryable undo, the contract can accidentally keep running down an unintended path and record a broken final status. In short, a temporary hiccup that a user could normally retry and fix could turn into a permanent, irreversible failure—potentially locking up claimable rewards or breaking automated vault payouts.
The Core Conflict: Aggressive Scaling Versus Ironclad Backwards Compatibility
The Hoodi testnet postponement highlights one of the toughest engineering dilemmas in blockchain technology: how do you modernize a network’s engine while it is flying at full speed with billions of USD in user savings aboard?
On one side, core researchers want Ethereum to scale aggressively. Alongside the fee adjustments, Glamsterdam is slated to introduce major structural upgrades like Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) to curb unfair transaction ordering, plus block-level access lists that let computers process non-overlapping transactions in parallel. To safely lift gas limits and let the base layer handle more institutional and retail traffic, engineers need to make creating permanent hard drive bloat more expensive via proposals like EIP-8037.
On the other side sits Ethereum’s unspoken promise of immutability. Once a smart contract is deployed to the blockchain, its code often cannot be edited or patched—even by the people who built it. When protocol engineers change the underlying rules of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), they risk pulling the rug out from under older contracts that were written years ago under different assumptions. As ChainSecurity researchers emphasized in their analysis, even well-written contracts that followed best practices at the time of launch can become vulnerable when the network alters how gas refunds behave behind the scenes.
Market Implications: What the Glamsterdam Delay Means for ETH and DeFi Users
For everyday investors watching ETH trade at 2,317 USD, a delayed upgrade might initially sound like a setback—especially as fast-moving rivals like Solana (at 101 USD) push out speed-focused consensus updates of their own. However, institutional and retail capital ultimately relies on Ethereum for one primary reason: unmatched reliability.
If core developers had ignored the audit and pushed the flawed gas rules onto the Hoodi testnet today and into a rushed mainnet launch later this year, broken DeFi smart contracts would have caused real financial losses and damaged trust across the ecosystem. Instead, the collaborative response shows a maturing security culture:
- Zero Impact on Mainnet Funds — The postponement applies strictly to the Hoodi test environment. Your wallet balances, staked ETH, and active DeFi positions on the main Ethereum network remain completely untouched.
- Confidential Developer Outreach — According to industry reports, core researchers and security auditors have been working under confidential disclosures to contact the teams behind the 13 identified mainnet contracts and scan the blockchain for any similar code patterns.
- AMeasured Path Forward — Engineers now have breathing room to decide whether to rewrite the gas-reservoir rules inside EIP-8037 so they mimic legacy refund behavior, or give affected application teams time to migrate their users to updated contracts before Glamsterdam reaches the main network.
The Verdict: What Everyday Investors Should Watch Next
For regular crypto holders, you do not need to update your wallet, move your tokens, or change how you interact with Ethereum applications. Only technical node operators and validators running software on the Hoodi test network needed to update their client settings prior to today’s canceled October 26 activation window.
Looking ahead, investors should keep an eye on upcoming All Core Developers meetings over the next several weeks. How quickly researchers resolve the EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 gas-accounting conflict will determine when the Hoodi dress rehearsal gets a new launch date—and whether the full Glamsterdam mainnet upgrade stays on track for late 2026 or slips into early 2027. In a market where Bitcoin commands 80,116 USD and investors prize safety above hype, Ethereum’s willingness to pause and fix a hidden flaw is a win for every wallet on the network.
The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
postponing the hoodi run because 13 mainnet contracts could break on the gas refund change is exactly the kind of boring caution eth needs rn
the state-gas reservoir in 8037 silently changing leftover refunds is such a subtle footgun. good catch by chainsecurity tbh
good catch but it also means nobody ran full vault simulations until the final audit. that process gap is the real story here imo
If they had shipped it and vault payouts started failing irreversibly, it would have been a mess nobody could roll back. Delay was the only sane call.
eth sitting at 2317 while devs refuse to ship broken code on a deadline. respect
an audit catching a fee-accounting bug that would have hit 13 live contracts is exactly what testnets are for. delay is fine by me
ETH barely moved on the news, 2,317 and chilling. market learned that cancelled launches usually mean safer mainnets
^ remember Shanghai got pushed too and it ended up being the most painless upgrade ever. delays are bullish if anything
shanghai had way more client runway than this tho. 13 live contracts exposed to the 8037 refund change and it got caught in audit, not on hoodi. different risk profile entirely
kinda worrying that new fee rules almost broke contracts nobody flagged before the audit tho. who writes these EIPs
same people who write them review them half the time. 8037 was like five pages and still slipped a refund change past everyone