Glamsterdam Upgrade May Break L1 Contracts Due to Gas Pricing Changes

Ethereum's upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade will introduce significant changes to gas pricing, which may break a handful of Layer 1 smart contracts. The Ethereum Foundation has warned that some contracts could malfunction due to hardcoded assumptions about gas costs.

The changes are driven by two Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs): EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. These proposals aim to make gas prices more accurate, reflecting the computational resources required for different state operations. EIP-8037 standardizes costs for creating new state elements, including accounts, storage slots, and deployed contract bytecode.

The Ethereum Foundation has replayed historical mainnet transactions under the proposed Glamsterdam pricing schedule. The results showed that most transactions produced identical outcomes, while some required different gas limits under the new rules. A small group of contracts continued to fail even after researchers substantially raised the supplied gas.