Two Rival Proposals Aim to Keep Ethereum's Glamsterdam Upgrade from Breaking Existing Contracts
Two Ethereum developers, Leo Glisic and Giulio Rebuffo, submitted competing proposals on November 8 to prevent gas pricing changes in the Glamsterdam upgrade from breaking existing smart contracts. Neither proposal has been approved for inclusion, and security researchers estimate roughly 200,000 contracts could be affected under the current design.
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The Competing Proposals
Two Ethereum developers have submitted separate draft proposals aimed at keeping the planned Glamsterdam upgrade from disrupting contracts already live on the network. Leo Glisic's EIP-8488 and a separate draft from Giulio Rebuffo were both submitted on Sunday, November 8, according to Crypto.news. Neither has been approved for inclusion in Glamsterdam.
The approaches differ in how they separate old and new behavior. EIP-8488 would introduce a new set of V2 opcodes for newly deployed contracts, which would follow the revised pricing from EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, while existing contracts keep the original pricing structure. Rebuffo's draft instead runs two gas accounting systems inside each transaction: one measures gas under the previous rules so a contract sees the conditions it expects, and the other calculates the actual fee under the new schedule. Rebuffo's draft acknowledges that no execution client implementation or consensus tests have yet been completed for the design.
Why Existing Contracts Are at Risk
The compatibility concern centers on EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, which change how Ethereum charges for creating and accessing blockchain state. EIP-8037 would raise the base gas charge for creating a smart contract from 32,000 to 183,600, excluding additional execution and code storage costs. Some deployed contracts reserve a fixed amount of gas for external calls or depend on specific behavior when transactions fail, and a change in gas consumption could break those assumptions.
Security firm ChainSecurity identified eight assumptions used by existing smart contracts that could become invalid under the proposed rules, as Crypto.news previously reported. The scale is disputed. Pseudonymous developer banteg wrote on X that an existing analysis had already flagged roughly 200,000 potentially affected contracts, and argued that methodological problems could mean the true number is higher. The concern, according to banteg, extends to the deployment and operation of several prominent protocols rather than isolated coding errors. Neither figure has been independently verified in the sources reviewed.
Industry Reaction
Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov warned on X that Glamsterdam in its current form would likely force another emergency hard fork. "Dear @ethereum – please don't break the chain," he wrote. Ethereum community member and investor Ryan Berckmans first backed moving ahead with the upgrade, arguing Ethereum could not guarantee unchanged gas pricing for every application, then reversed course. "We should (clearly, now) not continue towards Glam activation asap. I was wrong to say so," he wrote on X. Security researcher pcaversaccio has also taken a firmer position against proceeding, though the sources reviewed do not give the full substance of that view.
What Comes Next
The proposals follow security warnings that have already forced developers to postpone parts of Glamsterdam's testing schedule. Whether either design can be implemented and tested in time remains open, and the sources do not give a timeline for a decision on inclusion.
Why It Matters
For Traders
Upgrade delays and emergency-fork risk could add near-term uncertainty for ETH, though no decision on Glamsterdam's timing has been reported.
For Investors
A contested upgrade path that risks an emergency hard fork is a governance and execution signal worth tracking across Ethereum's roadmap.
For Builders
Developers should audit contracts for fixed-gas assumptions and external-call gas reservations before any EIP-8037 pricing change ships.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice. Read the full disclaimer.
