Ethereum’s next upgrade breaks the '21,000 gas' rule wallets rely on
The Ethereum Foundation has warned developers that an upcoming network upgrade, 'Glamsterdam,' will change the gas cost structure for ETH transfers. Future transactions to new, previously unused addresses will cost significantly more than transfers to existing accounts, breaking software that relies on a fixed 21,000 gas limit.
Why it matters
This change requires significant updates to wallet software and blockchain services to prevent transaction failures, highlighting the technical challenges of evolving decentralized network protocols.
Developers from the Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit that supports and maintains Ethereum, told wallet makers, blockchain trackers, and fee calculators in a blog post to update any software built on the assumption that a basic ETH transfer costs 21,000 gas units. Gas is how Ethereum measures the work a transaction asks the network to do, and users pay for that work in ETH.
Today, that 21,000 applies whether the receiving account has been used before or not. Under Ethereum's next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, sending to an existing account still costs 21,000, while sending to an address that has never appeared in Ethereum's records costs more because the network has to create and permanently store a new account.
The proposal puts that extra charge at 183,600 units of a new category called state gas.
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