The Ethereum Foundation has issued a reminder for anyone maintaining L1 contracts on the Ethereum mainnet. The Glamsterdam upgrade has not landed yet, but the gas repricing inside it could affect a small number of contracts.
The upgrade, scheduled for Q4 2026, includes EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. Those EIPs change how much it costs to create and access state on layer one. Gas costs for state operations were last adjusted during the Berlin fork in 2021. Since then, Ethereum’s state has grown significantly, and the current pricing no longer matches the actual work required.
Most contracts should be fine. The Foundation says the large majority will not feel any change. However, a small set may break or degrade if they are not updated. The problem tends to show up in contracts that rely on assumptions tied to the old gas schedule, such as hardcoded gas values. A replay of historical mainnet transactions under the new schedule found that some contracts depend on those old assumptions.
Why repricing matters
The repricing is not just a maintenance task. It is also a step toward raising the gas limit. If state operations are priced closer to their real cost, Ethereum can support a higher gas limit without pushing the network into an unsafe zone. The new schedule is built around a performance target that allows for roughly a 3x increase in base throughput.
That sounds like a big deal, and it is. But the immediate focus is on the edge cases. Developers say most of the highlighted concerns can be resolved simply by increasing the gas limit. Direct outreach to the most affected builders is already underway, so the team is not waiting for things to break.
What to check now
If you maintain contracts on L1, the Foundation suggests reviewing code for hardcoded gas values or assumptions about state access costs. Contracts that do not use those assumptions are probably fine. For everyone else, it makes sense to test against the new schedule before the upgrade lands.
Glamsterdam is the name for the next Ethereum upgrade, combining Amsterdam on the execution side and Gloas on the consensus side. It follows Fusaka and is meant to scale the L1 by reorganizing how transactions are handled and how the network manages its database. The end result, if all goes as planned, is a different way of generating and verifying blocks.
There is still time before Q4 2026. But the alert is a useful reminder that even small pricing changes can have outsized effects on contracts that live on assumptions. Checking early beats patching later.
