Ethereum Developers Issue L1 Contract Alert as Gas Repricing Nears

Ethereum developers have issued an alert for L1 contract users on the ETH mainnet as the Glamsterdam upgrade progresses.

In a recent post, the Ethereum Foundation gave a heads-up for anyone maintaining L1 contracts ahead of the Glamsterdam upgrade scheduled for Q4 2026.

The Glamsterdam upgrade will include gas repricings (EIP-8037, EIP-8038), which will shift state creation and access costs.

While most contracts are unaffected, Ethereum developers warn that a small set may break or degrade without updates. Affected contracts rely on assumptions that the new schedule changes, such as hardcoded gas values.

EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, both anticipated for inclusion in the Glamsterdam upgrade, will modify the cost of creating and accessing state, allowing gas costs to better reflect the actual work required for each operation.

Replaying historical mainnet transactions under the new schedule reveals that a tiny set of smart contracts rely on assumptions the new schedule shifts, potentially causing these contracts to break or degrade without preventative upgrades.

The bulk of highlighted concerns are resolved with an increase in the gas limit, and the large majority of smart contracts remain unaffected, while direct outreach to the most-affected builders is already underway.

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Gas prices for state operations were last adjusted in the Berlin fork in 2021, following which Ethereum’s state has grown significantly.

Repricing state operations to reflect their actual cost is a prerequisite for increasing the gas limit further. The new schedule is derived from a performance target that supports roughly a 3x increase in base throughput.

About Glamsterdam

Ethereum‘s upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade aims to pave the way for the next generation of scaling. Glamsterdam is named from the combination of “Amsterdam” (execution layer upgrade) and “Gloas” (consensus layer upgrade).

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Following the Fusaka upgrade, Glamsterdam focuses on scaling the L1 by reorganizing how the network handles transactions and manages its huge database, substantially changing how Ethereum generates and verifies blocks.