[DigitalToday reporter Hyunwoo Choo] Ethereum developers have postponed applying the Glamsterdam hard fork to the Hoodi testnet after security risks were raised. Cointelegraph reported on Thursday that the upgrade, originally scheduled for Oct. 26, was delayed after concerns emerged that some proposals could affect how existing smart contracts handle failed transactions.

The Ethereum Foundation said it needs more time to further review how some proposals included in Glamsterdam interact with already deployed Ethereum smart contracts. The delay has also made the timing of the mainnet rollout uncertain. Developers had planned to set the schedule after Hoodi testing ends and had been considering early December for the mainnet rollout.

The items in question are EIP-8037 and EIP-8038. ChainSecurity warned on Oct. 13 that the two proposals could weaken safeguards against insufficient gas griefing attacks. In such attacks, a malicious caller deliberately supplies too little gas for normal smart contract execution, causing a transaction to fail.

ChainSecurity explained that under the new rules, some gas could be returned to the contract even after an operation fails. In that case, a contract that previously should have stopped could continue running. It also said the change could affect existing security checks designed around the amount of gas remaining during a transaction.

Such changes could cause failed operations to be permanently recorded on a contract. For example, an affected contract could delete a user's claim rights or disable a retry function. That could prevent users from completing operations that would otherwise be processed normally.

Pascal Caversaccio (파스칼 카버사치오), a prominent independent security researcher and developer active in the Ethereum ecosystem, urged a re-examination of the hard fork on GitHub on Oct. 21, calling the risks serious. ChainSecurity said it identified 13 cases confirmed in real-world environments and is conducting a responsible disclosure process with affected projects. It did not disclose specific cases or project names. It urged developers to review their contracts as soon as possible.

Not all gas-related security checks will be rendered ineffective. Some safeguards may continue to work, but developers need to review contracts again to reflect the new gas rules after the upgrade. The Ethereum Foundation previously warned that changes to Glamsterdam's gas model could break wallets, indexers and gas estimation tools that rely on fixed assumptions. Glamsterdam was first activated on Sepolia on Oct. 6, and the Hoodi rollout has now been delayed.