Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade could ease DeFi congestion, Curve says

Curve Finance has said Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade could give complex DeFi transactions more reliable access to blockspace, citing mainnet checks in which a leveraged borrow used about 1.84 million gas against 125,000 for a direct stablecoin swap.

Curve Finance, the decentralized finance protocol behind the crvUSD stablecoin, said Glamsterdam’s value should be measured by how transactions perform during congestion rather than by the block gas limit alone.

In comments shared with crypto.news, the team identified transaction inclusion times and actual user fees during demand spikes as the practical tests of whether Ethereum’s added capacity improves access. Its assessment also made easier validation a condition of successful scaling.

Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade could help complex DeFi transactions

According to Curve’s mainnet checks, a leveraged borrowing transaction consumed roughly 1.84 million gas, compared with 125,000 for a direct stablecoin swap. Based on those figures, the borrowing operation used about 14.7 times as much gas.

For transactions combining borrowing with a collateral purchase, the team said congestion can affect several parts of the same operation. More predictable access to blockspace would therefore be particularly useful for users carrying out complex transactions when network activity rises, in Curve’s view.

Cheaper execution could also make smaller arbitrage trades worth completing, according to the protocol’s team. It expects longer swap routes to become more economical, potentially improving the prices available through its pools and making positions easier to open or unwind.

The team described added capacity as welcome when Ethereum can provide it without making validation harder. Its comments stopped short of claiming that every user action would become cheaper, pointing instead to changes in the way the upgrade charges for state operations.

In Oct. 6 coverage of the 200 million gas test, earlier reporting described Sepolia preparations for a block gas limit up from roughly 60 million. The report explained that the test setting would not automatically become Ethereum mainnet’s limit.

According to Prysm’s Oct. 5 release notes, version 7.2.1 added the Sepolia schedule so validators would default to 200 million gas after the fork. The preceding version supported the upgrade but would retain the 60 million setting unless operators changed their configuration.

Liquidation benefits depend on timely transactions

During sharp market moves, Curve said liquidators, oracle updates and borrowers compete for blockspace. Extra capacity could help their transactions get through, although the team cautioned that larger blocks would still face demand.

For Curve’s lending system, the expected benefit involves LLAMMA, its liquidation mechanism. According to the team, cheaper and faster arbitrage should help LLAMMA track market prices more closely as collateral passes through its liquidation range.

By reducing delays in that process, the protocol expects the upgrade could limit losses associated with prices moving before transactions complete. Curve also linked dependable liquidations to the stability of crvUSD.

The team placed particular weight on performance during volatility, when users need to act on positions rather than wait for network congestion to clear.

“What we think should be watched most closely is execution under real load.”

In Curve’s assessment, a higher gas ceiling would offer limited practical benefit if transactions continued to stall during busy periods. The team said the relevant measurements are how quickly transactions enter blocks and what users pay when competition for blockspace increases.

Gas repricing could require contract and wallet changes

Alongside its expected execution benefits, Curve warned that Glamsterdam reprices state operations, meaning some actions would require more gas.

Ethereum developers raised related concerns in an Aug. 26 report on smart contract compatibility risks. According to the Ethereum Foundation warning covered there, most contracts were unaffected in transaction replays, while many flagged failures could be fixed by supplying higher gas limits.

The Foundation identified fixed gas allowances, hardcoded call limits and gas-sensitive contract logic among the risk factors. Its warning also extended to wallets, infrastructure providers and gas-estimation tools that rely on cached assumptions.

Under the proposed changes described in that report, EIP-8037 changes the cost of creating state, including accounts and contract storage, while EIP-8038 revises charges for accessing existing state. Developers were urged to test applications before mainnet activation.

On validation, Curve said Ethereum should preserve the ability to verify its ledger without asking permission. The team warned that scaling would compromise that principle if added capacity made independent verification impractical.

Public testing follows capacity checks and builder warnings

In Sep. 18 coverage of Glamsterdam testnet builder risks, Ethereum developers warned that free test ether could allow malicious builders to win block auctions and withhold transaction payloads.

The developer discussion treated the scenario as a public-testnet availability concern rather than a way to steal mainnet ETH. According to the report, Devnet-11 had used 84,000 validators across multiple clients, but its controlled rehearsal excluded deliberate attacks.

For U.S. investors following Ether through listed funds, a Sep. 19 report on U.S. Ether ETF withdrawals recorded approximately $140.6 million in net outflows during Sep. 14–18, based on Farside data. Ether was the weakest of the four crypto ETF categories covered in that report.

According to the Oct. 6 upgrade coverage, the Ethereum Foundation had not set Hoodi or mainnet activation dates and said separate announcements would follow agreement among client teams.