Ethereum Delays Glamsterdam Hoodi Fork as Developers Test EIP-8037
Mainnet ETH holders and users do not need to take any action, since this change only touches the Hoodi test network and its operators.
Ethereum core developers have postponed the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi testnet, which had been set to activate on October 26 at 17:42:48 UTC.
They want more time to study how a gas pricing change known as EIP-8037 behaves with smart contracts already running on the mainnet, and no replacement date has been set.
Developers Pull Hoodi Date to Probe EIP-8037 Interactions
The postponement follows a decision at All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) call #248, according to an update announcement that supersedes the earlier Hoodi schedule.
Developers cited the need for “further investigation of interactions of EIP-8037 with mainnet smart contracts.” But the notice does not describe what that investigation has found so far.
EIP-8037 raises the gas cost of creating state, meaning the account and storage data every node has to keep, and meters that cost separately from other changes. The original Hoodi announcement had already told application developers that contracts relying on fixed gas stipends or hardcoded gas limits may need changes.
Pulling the date strips the Amsterdam execution layer and Gloas consensus layer activations from Hoodi’s configuration, along with a schedule that would have raised the network’s gas limit to 200M at the same epoch. But it is a configuration rollback only since Hoodi’s chain history is untouched.
Operators of Hoodi nodes and validators should check both their execution and consensus clients for instructions reflecting the postponement, and any software or custom network configuration still pointing to the old time needs updating.
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Per the new update, release tables in the earlier announcement are no proof that those versions carry the change. Lodestar v1.50.1 is the only client release listed so far, and application developers have been advised not to build Hoodi testing plans around October 26.
Mainnet users are unaffected. According to the announcement, “no action is required from Ethereum mainnet users or ETH holders as a result of this update,” and it sets no concrete Glamsterdam mainnet date either.
Sepolia Went First, After Devnet Trouble in September
As CryptoPotato reported earlier on September 11, developers had already faced testing problems before Glamsterdam’s planned October 6 activation on Sepolia.
At that stage, private development networks had encountered bugs, including difficulties finalizing the chain and an issue associated with EIP-8037 that was expected to require updates to every execution-layer client. But Glamsterdam went live on Sepolia that day, and Hoodi was next in line.
Meanwhile, at the market, Ethereum’s native ETH token had dipped slightly in 24 hours, having shed about 1% at the time of writing to trade near $2,400. The loss is more marked across longer timeframes, it being 4% over two weeks and nearly 14% in the last 30 days to help keep the asset over 51% below its all-time high near $5,000.
