Ethereum Upgrade Glamsterdam Halted Before Hoodi Over Eight Gas Traps

Ethereum's next major upgrade stays on the test bench for now. On November 6, the Ethereum Foundation announced in a blog post by developer Marius van der Wijden that Glamsterdam will only move to the Hoodi testnet once the problems found during testing have been resolved. The trigger is two changes to gas costs, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, which according to the auditing firm ChainSecurity could leave existing smart contracts open to attack. Ether traded at $2,233 on Saturday evening according to CoinGecko, roughly €2,005, which put it 11.7 percent below its level of 30 days earlier.

What is established: the network itself is not affected, but the upgrade schedule no longer has a fixed next date. Our assessment follows further down. In short, the pause is a side issue for the price in the near term, yet it takes away a catalyst that many buyers had been counting on before the end of the year. Where the price could head over a horizon of months is covered in our Ethereum price prediction. This article explains what lies behind the delay, which costs on the network are set to change, how the derivatives market prices the situation through December and which price levels for Ether matter now.

Glamsterdam halted before Hoodi: what the Ethereum Foundation announced on November 6

Glamsterdam is the collective name for Ethereum's next hard fork package. A hard fork is a change to the rules that every node on the network has to adopt at the same time. The name combines two parts: Amsterdam for the execution layer, where transactions and smart contracts run, and Gloas for the consensus layer, where validators confirm blocks. The package includes enshrined proposer-builder separation in the protocol (ePBS, EIP-7732) and block-level access lists, which are meant to let nodes process transactions in parallel more quickly.

On Ethereum, new rules move through testnets in stages before they reach mainnet. On Sepolia, the testnet for app developers, Glamsterdam was activated on October 6, according to reports by the trade outlet CryptoPotato. Hoodi is the final dress rehearsal, above all for validator operators and staking services. It is exactly this step that has now been put on hold. According to the blog post, the core developer group known as All Core Devs has delayed the hard fork process, and Hoodi will not be forked until the problems are solved. The Foundation gives no date for mainnet.

Two points from the post matter for holders. First, this is not about a bug in the live network but about other projects' programs that rely on today's cost model. Second, work on the upgrade after next, Hegota, continues in parallel. Besides its own reviews, the Foundation has brought in the security firms ChainSecurity and Dedaub, and it writes itself that they cannot cover every project. Affected teams are asked to get in touch through a dedicated address.

EIP-8037 and EIP-8038: how gas costs for storage shift

Gas is the unit in which Ethereum bills every computational step of a transaction. Anyone who sends a transaction pays gas multiplied by the gas price. The two proposals change how much gas certain steps cost and, above all, how the network accounts for data that is stored permanently. Such data is called state: account balances, smart contract storage slots and deployed program code. Every node has to keep the state, which is why its growth is meant to become more expensive.

To that end, EIP-8037 introduces a separate state gas that is counted apart from regular gas. The figures are in the glamsterdam-gas-invariants test repository that the developers published on GitHub. A new storage slot costs 22,100 gas today; under Amsterdam it would be 110,020. A transfer that creates a new account comes to 183,600 state gas. Deployed code costs 1,530 gas per byte. On top of that comes a reservoir that only kicks in when a transaction carries more than 16,777,216 gas.

EIP-8038 concerns overwriting existing storage slots. Such a write costs 2,900 gas today if the slot has already been read in the transaction, otherwise 5,000 gas. Under the proposal it would be 10,100 and 12,100 gas, roughly 7,200 gas more per operation.

Why higher storage costs do not automatically raise fees

For users, this does not necessarily mean higher fees. Glamsterdam is also meant to speed up processing on the network, for instance through block-level access lists. What becomes more expensive is specifically whatever places a permanent burden on the network; simple transfers between existing accounts are barely affected. How this eventually translates into euros per transaction depends on the gas price that the market sets.

Eight invariants: which smart contracts could break in the switchover

An invariant is an assumption that a program silently treats as true forever. ChainSecurity found projects whose security depends on such assumptions, and the developers have published eight of them along with examples. Three illustrate what is at stake.

Many contracts work with fixed amounts of gas, such as the 2,300 gas stipend that a transfer passes along to another contract. Under the new prices, this amount is no longer enough to create a new storage slot. Other contracts measure their consumption by comparing the remaining gas before and after a call. With the reservoir, that remainder can even rise during a call, and the calculation no longer adds up. A third assumption is that gas consumed by a failed call is lost. Under EIP-8037, the caller would get it back, up to 183,600 gas in the case of a failed contract creation.

Each of these deviations is small on its own. It becomes dangerous where a contract manages money and an attacker could deliberately exploit the new accounting, for example to get around a lock or to distort a settlement. That is precisely why the developers are pulling the brake before Hoodi: after this testnet, usually only the mainnet date remains.

Ethereum price on Saturday: $2,233 and little movement since Friday

So far the market has absorbed the news without major swings. In our analysis of the staking queue on Friday evening, Ether stood at $2,229; on Saturday evening it is $2,233. The trading range of the past 24 hours runs from $2,218 to $2,249 according to CoinGecko, narrower than on any other day this week. On Wednesday, after the US election, Ether had still reached an intraday high of $2,447, based on daily data from Kraken; since then the price has given back the entire gain.

What has changed since Friday: the 200-day moving average, which stood yesterday as the next support at $2,157, now sits at $2,156 based on Kraken's daily closes and has not been tested. Twice in a row, on November 5 and 6, the price turned higher just above $2,200, at $2,202 and $2,201. That zone has therefore gained weight. Compared with the all-time high of $4,946 on August 24, 2025, Ether is down about 55 percent.

Metric	Value	Source
Ether price on Saturday evening	$2,233 (about €2,005)	CoinGecko, Kraken
Change over 30 days	minus 11.7 percent	CoinGecko
20-day moving average	$2,332	Kraken, daily close
50-day moving average	$2,499	Kraken, daily close
200-day moving average	$2,156	Kraken, daily close
Low of the past 30 days	$2,170 on October 30	Kraken

Ethereum options on Deribit: calls for late December clearly dominate

The derivatives market deserves a second look. An option is the right to buy Ether at a fixed price (call) or to sell it (put). The ratio of open puts to open calls shows whether traders are mainly hedging against falling prices or betting on rising ones. Values below 1 mean more calls than puts.

We analysed open positions on Saturday afternoon directly through the API of the options exchange Deribit. For the November 13 expiry, 86,095 ETH in puts face 39,457 ETH in calls, a ratio of 2.18. In our article on this expiry from November 5, puts still stood at 77,441 ETH. Hedging for the coming week has therefore grown. Further out, the picture flips: for November 27 there are 156,832 ETH in calls against 82,230 ETH in puts, a ratio of 0.52. For the large quarterly expiry on December 25, it is 452,588 ETH in calls against 175,538 ETH in puts, a ratio of 0.39.

The figures say nothing about who bought and who sold the options. What they do reveal is where interest lies: on protection in the short term, on upside for December. A postponement of Glamsterdam into next year would touch part of this December hope, to the extent that it was tied to the upgrade.

Ethereum price levels through December: $2,156, $2,332 and $2,499

Price, moving averages and the derivatives market point to three paths. They are not a forecast; they show the points at which the picture changes.

Bear case: a daily close below the 200-day moving average

If Ether closes a day below $2,156, the 200-day moving average is broken, and the 30-day low at $2,170 goes with it. The double turn above $2,200 would then be worthless. The next zone where the price found lasting support this year lies well below; Ether marked its 120-day low on July 13 with a close of $1,775. The put overhang for November 13 supports this path.

Sideways range: $2,200 to $2,332

If the zone above $2,200 holds and the 20-day moving average at $2,332 remains a ceiling, Ether would swing in a range of around six percent until next week's expiry. That is the path that fits this weekend's quiet trading range.

Recovery: a daily close above the 50-day moving average

Only a daily close above $2,499 would break the downtrend of recent weeks. On the way there lies the November 4 high at $2,447. The call weighting for late November and December argues for this path; the missing date for Glamsterdam argues against it.

If you use leverage to bet on one of these paths, align your distance to liquidation with these levels rather than with round numbers. A position with fivefold leverage is closed out after an adverse move of just under 20 percent, minus fees; with tenfold leverage, after just under 10 percent. Which regulated providers in Germany offer derivatives on Ether, and what they charge, is shown in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

Holding Ether in Germany: holding period, custody and upgrade scams

For holders in Germany, the delay initially changes nothing about their wallet or holdings. Ether does not have to be swapped or moved to a new wallet during a hard fork; that applies to Glamsterdam just as it did to every earlier upgrade. If you receive a message saying you must migrate, verify or send your ETH to a new address because of the upgrade, you are dealing with a scam attempt. Such messages appear regularly before and after major upgrades, by email, on social networks and as fake wallet notices.

Ether is safest in a wallet whose keys only you know. A hardware wallet keeps the key offline and shows every transaction on its own display for confirmation, so a fake website cannot trigger a payment. Which devices support Ether and Ethereum tokens is set out in our comparison of hardware wallets.

For tax purposes, the familiar rule still applies in Germany: gains from selling Ether are tax-free after a holding period of more than one year, and within that period an exemption limit of €1,000 applies to all private disposal gains in a year. According to the Federal Ministry of Finance's guidance, staking does not extend the holding period to ten years. Where the debate about abolishing the holding period stands is summarised on our page on the crypto holding period and its reform. If you have bought on several exchanges over the years, it is easy to lose track of purchase dates; tax software calculates the deadlines for each purchase, and our comparison of crypto tax tools shows the differences.

If you stake Ether through an exchange, you do not need to do anything because of the pause either. Validators keep running under the existing rules, and the yield does not depend on the upgrade schedule. Our overview of staking platforms compares the providers' terms.

Our assessment of the Glamsterdam delay

In the editorial team's view, the pause is a sign of working oversight rather than a setback for the network. The evidence: the problems were found on a testnet, not after launch on mainnet; the Foundation made them public, published the assumptions along with examples and brought in two external auditors. For an upgrade that raises gas costs for storage fivefold, a thorough review is appropriate.

Two things follow for the price. In the short term, the put overhang for November 13 and the position relative to the 200-day moving average dominate, and the upgrade hardly plays a role there. Through the end of the year, however, there is no date for buyers to orient themselves by. On the other side, the call weighting for December remains high at a ratio of 0.39, and the developers are explicitly working on solving the problems in parallel. We do not derive a buy signal from this: cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, and a total loss is possible.

If you want to buy Ether or add to a position, pay attention to fees and licensing. Exchanges licensed under the EU's MiCA regulation are subject to supervision in the EU. Fees vary many times over from one provider to the next, and our comparison of crypto exchanges lists them.

Glamsterdam pause: below $2,156 the picture tips

1. Watch the level: What matters is the daily close relative to the 200-day moving average at $2,156 and the zone above $2,200. You will find a low-fee way to buy in the exchange comparison.
2. Secure your holdings: No upgrade requires you to send or swap Ether. If you hold your own coins, keep the key on a hardware wallet.
3. Record your deadlines: Note the purchase date of every tranche so that you know when the one-year period for a tax-free sale ends. Tax software can do this for you.

(As of November 7, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)