Ethereum developers cancelled the second and final testnet for the Glamsterdam hard fork this week. Security firm ChainSecurity found vulnerabilities in two gas scaling proposals, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038.
The bugs could cause contracts that rely on current gas behavior to break when a call runs out of gas. At least 13 DeFi contracts could have been affected, and an attacker may have been able to exploit the flaws.
The testnet run on Hoodi will not be rescheduled until the effects of the fork are fully reviewed. Derek Chiang of Ethlabs said the issues were found very late, “causing everyone to scramble to deal with the fallout.”
AI Agents Join the Ethereum Bug Hunt
Chiang said two researchers from Ethlabs and the Ethereum Foundation separately launched AI agents to scan contracts for weaknesses. When they learned they were using the same approach, they set up a message board for their agents on GitHub.
He compared it to the OpenAI and Hugging Face hack, where rogue agents used a message board to coordinate attacks. A second board now examines EIP-8198, known as “Quick Slots,” which is proposed for the later Hegota hard fork.
Bitcoin Core is also changing its security policy because large language models can find bugs quickly. Developer Antoine Poinsot said long disclosure embargoes now do little except delay fixed releases.
Solana Upgrade and Starknet Vote
Solana’s first major consensus upgrade, Alpenglow, went live on mainnet Wednesday. Anza said the time for a transaction to become final fell from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds.
The first phase, Votor, replaces the old voting system with direct validator voting and certificates. DeFi activity on the network has been flat or slightly lower since the launch.
Starknet’s community voted to support research into becoming an independent, post-quantum layer-1 blockchain. About 3,200 votes were cast, with 93.52% of voting power in favor.
A separate binding vote would be needed for the actual change. StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said a draft whitepaper could be released in November.
Starknet was the worst performer among the top 100 coins this week, falling 24.9%. Aerodrome Finance and Sei each dropped 12.5%.
Bitcoin fell 1.2% to $80,549, and Ether dropped 1.9% to $2,343. XRP rose 0.9% to $1.20, and the total crypto market cap stood at $2.68 trillion.
MemeCore led weekly gains with a 24.4% rise. Venice Token followed at 14.8%, and Ethena gained 14.1%.
JPMorgan Asset Management projected Bitcoin will return 10% a year over the next decade. That compares with 7.5% for large US stocks and 5.5% for gold, though the bank called Bitcoin a speculative asset.
Senator Richard Blumenthal asked Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino for records on a reported $6.3 million deal with a firm co-founded by former White House crypto adviser Bo Hines. Tether said an outside probe “found no evidence of wrongdoing.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $1.37 billion from NovaTech founders Cynthia and Eddy Petion over an alleged Ponzi scheme. More than 11,000 New Yorkers lost tens of millions of dollars.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth banned Pentagon staff from using nonpublic information to bet on military action. The ban covers prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket.
A “Steal My Bitcoin” site that challenged hackers to exploit PHP2Shell flaws was cracked within a day. A user named KillerBoi extracted the private key, but it did not match the roughly $2,000 wallet shown on the site.
Organizer James Pavur said this was a mistake and that the funds would be transferred.
