Ethereum Keeps Glamsterdam Hoodi Fork on Hold Over Gas Risks
In this article
Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade will not fork on the Hoodi testnet until security questions around its gas-accounting changes are settled, Ethereum Foundation developer Marius van der Wijden said in a November 6 developer update. The postponement traces to an October 13 report from smart contract auditor ChainSecurity, which found that two proposals, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, could break contracts that assume certain operations cost a fixed amount of gas, as reported by Crypto.news.
How a failed call can change the outcome
The concern sits in a detail most users encounter only when a transaction fails. Contracts can call other contracts and choose how to respond if the call comes back unsuccessful. Under EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, the network charges differently for some state creation and state access, which can change how much gas a contract has left at a given point. As a result, a call that fails under the proposed rules may leave the caller able to finish a failure handler and record a result, where the earlier schedule might have reverted the whole transaction.
ChainSecurity also examined checks built on gasleft(). A threshold a developer embedded at deployment cannot adjust itself when the gas schedule changes, so a comparison that worked under one pricing model can become a poor predictor under another. The review covers fixed allowances, separate state-gas reserves that may fund writes even after a failed call, and EIP-7702 delegation transactions that can be included even when the authorisation inside them did not take effect.
What the two reports show
Both outlets describe the same hold, but the emphases differ. Crypto.news frames the issue around the practical behaviour of applications at tight gas budgets and the testing needed to reproduce it, while Cointelegraph reported that the Ethereum Foundation’s Friday blog post linked the delay to the eight invariants and cited the October 13 ChainSecurity report as the trigger. Cointelegraph also noted that the October 23 delay was attributed to how EIP-8037 interacts with mainnet contracts, which is consistent with the later November 6 status update from van der Wijden.
Both outlets trace the sequence: Sepolia activation on October 6, a planned Hoodi fork on October 26, a postponement on October 23, and a November 6 update that kept the hold in place. Neither report gives a new Hoodi date.
Why it matters
The finding is significant because it affects contracts already deployed, not just future ones. Immutable contracts that embed gas assumptions cannot be revised in place, and wallets, relayers and indexers that estimate or sponsor transactions may need to adjust as well. A successful Hoodi fork would give client teams and application operators a shared environment to compare results, but a testnet result is not the same as mainnet readiness. Ethereum’s upgrade cycle has repeatedly shown that testnet postponements add scrutiny rather than remove it, and the Hoodi hold is the latest example.
Market snapshot
At 12:47 UTC on November 9, 2026, CoinPaprika data put ETH at $2,123 (₹199,317), down 5.0% over 24 hours and 7.5% over seven days, with a market cap of $259.48B and 24-hour volume of $9.80B. Bitcoin traded at $74,736 (₹7,015,571), down 1.4% on the day and 4.2% on the week.
What it means for India
Indian ETH holders pay a flat 30% tax on VDA gains under Section 115BBH and 1% TDS on transfers under Section 194S, with losses not permitted to offset other income. ETH’s 7.5% weekly decline therefore has limited tax-planning relief for Indian traders, and the USDT-INR rate of ₹93.82 against a reference of ₹94.05 per USD, a 0.2% discount, suggests no significant domestic premium. Any further delay in Glamsterdam does not change those rules; it only keeps the network’s next testnet milestone pending.
What to watch
The next Glamsterdam milestone is a revised Hoodi schedule naming the client versions and fork configuration operators should run. A case that previously diverged reaching the intended result, together with cross-client agreement around the new gas boundaries, would give the clearest signal that the hold is close to resolution.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Ethereum delay the Hoodi fork?
Auditors found that changes to how gas is charged for creating and accessing state could alter contract behavior, particularly when an external call fails close to its gas limit, so developers are reviewing the affected assumptions first.
What do EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 change?
EIP-8037 changes how the protocol accounts for operations that create state, including a separate reservoir for eligible operations, while EIP-8038 reprices operations that access existing state.
Does the Hoodi hold affect Ethereum mainnet now?
No. The November update addresses the Hoodi test fork only and does not announce activation of the proposed gas rules on mainnet or a new mainnet date.
Has work stopped on other Ethereum upgrades?
No. The Ethereum Foundation’s update said work on Hegota, the next upgrade, is continuing in parallel with the Glamsterdam review.
How would a failed call still leave the outer transaction successful?
A contract that calls another contract can catch the failure and keep going if it has enough gas to finish its failure handler, so the same inner failure can produce different final state depending on the remaining budget.
Sources: crypto.news, Cointelegraph
