Ethereum developers have canceled the planned activation of the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi testnet, just four days before it was set to go live. The decision came after security firm ChainSecurity identified potential risks related to gas accounting in the upgrade. Christine D. Kim, founder of Protocol Watch, confirmed the cancellation on X, citing security concerns raised by ChainSecurity.
The issues stem from two proposals, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, which modify how Ethereum charges gas for state creation and access. ChainSecurity warned that the upgrade could cause unexpected behavior in contract code, even if the code itself remains unchanged. Specifically, it noted that a failed call could complete instead of reverting, potentially turning a retryable operation into a permanent failure.
Security researcher pcaversaccio urged developers to reassess the hard fork in light of these findings, though he acknowledged the final decision was not his to make. Node operators were advised to either revert to an older release or wait for an update that removes the Hoodi upgrade. Developers at Besu merged a pull request to unschedule the upgrade, but nodes running the old build will still activate it until they update.
The cancellation leaves the network's next hard fork without a final public test date, delaying the selection of a mainnet activation date. The Ethereum Foundation had previously listed December 1, December 8, and December 9 as candidate dates, contingent on a smooth Hoodi test. The Glamsterdam upgrade, which includes EIP-7732 and EIP-7928, had already gone live on the Sepolia testnet on October 6.