Ethereum developers have issued a warning to users maintaining L1 contracts on the Ethereum mainnet as the Glamsterdam upgrade approaches, projected for the fourth quarter of 2026.
Glamsterdam upgrade details
The Ethereum Foundation stated that the Glamsterdam upgrade will implement gas repricings through the adoption of EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. These proposals are set to change the cost structure for state creation and access within Ethereum smart contracts, reflecting the actual computational effort required for each operation more accurately.
These changes are designed to align operation costs with the increasing size and complexity of Ethereum’s state, which has grown notably since the gas pricing adjustments implemented during the Berlin fork in 2021.
Glamsterdam takes its name from a blend of Ethereum’s prior “Amsterdam” execution layer upgrade and “Gloas” consensus layer upgrade, marking it as a major milestone in the network’s scaling roadmap.
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AAPLFollowing the Fusaka upgrade, Glamsterdam aims to reorganize how the network processes transactions by increasing efficiency in block generation and verification, positioning Ethereum for its next phase of scalability.
Mini dictionary: EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 are Ethereum Improvement Proposals focused on updating the gas fee schedule for certain state-related operations in Ethereum smart contracts, aiming to make transaction costs more accurately reflect underlying computational resources.
Impact on L1 contracts
While Ethereum developers do not anticipate broad disruption, they caution that a small subset of existing smart contracts could fail or see performance degrade if not updated ahead of the upgrade. Contracts at risk are those that rely on hardcoded gas assumptions that the new schedule will invalidate.
Despite most contracts remaining unaffected by the changes, developers highlighted 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.”
To mitigate the risks, developers recommend that affected contract maintainers increase their gas limits as a simple workaround. The Ethereum Foundation noted that outreach to developers most affected by these changes has already begun.
Replay tests of historical transactions using the new gas pricing demonstrated that only a few contracts depend on outdated estimations and require adjustments. The large majority of contracts are expected to operate normally.
Scaling and performance targets
One of the main technical objectives of Glamsterdam is to enable a further increase in Ethereum’s gas limit. Repricing state operations according to EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 is considered essential to support a roughly threefold expansion of the network’s base throughput.
| Fork/Upgrade | Year | Main Change | Projected Throughput Boost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin | 2021 | State gas price update | No direct increase |
| Fusaka | 2025 (expected) | Consensus, precursor to scaling | Modest |
| Glamsterdam | 2026 (expected) | New gas schedule, scaling focus | Up to 3x base throughput |
Ethereum core developers expect that matching gas fees to the workload of different state operations will ease the path to increasing the gas limit, helping facilitate larger transaction volumes and more robust scaling for the network.
Ethereum’s upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade “aims to pave the way for the next generation of scaling,” combining advances from the execution and consensus layers to significantly increase network performance.
