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Redistribution commit/reveal fall back to a 500,000 gas floor that no longer fits under Glamsterdam (EIP-8038)

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Since Oct 8, 2026.

Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
Under an hour
Newbie friendliness
85/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
go
Domain
blockchain

Research direction

Start in pkg/storageincentives/redistribution/redistribution.go at lines 114, 137, and 160 where MinEstimatedGasLimit is set to 500,000. Also check pkg/transaction/transaction.go where prepareTransaction uses this floor. Raise the limit for Commit and Reveal to at least 1,000,000 to cover Glamsterdam gas costs, then run tests to verify.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Context

Bee master at ba1238d913d75d5a1709e990d712e90087130115 (code reviewed, not run as a node). Network: Sepolia testnet, where Glamsterdam has been active since 2026-10-06 13:53:36 UTC. Measured from recorded Sepolia transactions and a public Sepolia RPC (geth). Related: #5650 (chequebook deployment, same gas repricing, different code path).

Swarm mainnet runs on Gnosis Chain, not Ethereum mainnet. So mainnet impact depends on Gnosis Chain adopting EIP-8037/8038; until then this affects testnet nodes only.

Summary

pkg/storageincentives/redistribution/redistribution.go sets MinEstimatedGasLimit: 500_000 for Claim (line 114), Commit (line 137) and Reveal (line 160). In pkg/transaction/transaction.go, prepareTransaction uses that value as the fallback when eth_estimateGas fails, and as the floor when the estimate plus 33% is lower. Before Glamsterdam the costliest reveal used 260,121 gas, so the floor always covered it. Under Glamsterdam the same calls can need about 740,000 (reveal) and 525,000 (commit), so a node that ends up on the 500,000 floor runs out of gas.

Expected behavior

Commit and reveal transactions get a gas limit that covers the call at execution.

Actual behavior

On the Sepolia Redistribution contract 0x5b718e36f5ce2f2f7e25a397040436ce6af3e89e, some nodes send commit and reveal at exactly 500,000 and run out of gas, while the same calls from other nodes succeed with higher estimated limits:

call before the fork (~72 h) after the fork (~30 h)
reveal at 500,000 949 sent, 7 failed, max gas used 260,121 74 sent, 38 failed
reveal, estimated limits (~985,000) succeed, using 733,814 to 738,786
commit at 500,000 958 sent, 1 failed, max gas used 231,884 68 sent, 35 failed
commit, estimated limits (~684,000) succeed, using 509,183 to 523,461

Example: reveal 0x26294e6d7a7afe4088b37cb774198b81300b9ae883f46375b9a481d589170b6e (block 11864703) used all 500,000 and failed out of gas. eth_estimateGas for the same call at the parent block returns 243,665; plus 33% that is below 500,000, so the node used the floor. At execution the call took the more expensive path.

Why the call got more expensive: the costliest pre-fork reveal (0x072c5d03d68ef5ca8a01cdb8ba2af73011301f69b8e329e3ae0b3a9ce9c6ff8e, 260,121 gas) makes 57 SSTOREs, all to existing slots. EIP-8038 raises an existing-slot update from 2,900 to 10,100 gas (5,000 to 12,100 cold), about 7,100 more per write.

Steps to reproduce
  1. On a Sepolia node, debug_traceTransaction 0x26294e6d7a7afe4088b37cb774198b81300b9ae883f46375b9a481d589170b6e '{"tracer":"callTracer"}': the top call to the Redistribution contract ends in out of gas at 500,000.
  2. eth_estimateGas with the same from, to and input at block 11864702: 243,665.
  3. Compare with any successful post-fork reveal from a node that sent a higher estimated limit (gas used 733,814 to 738,786).
  4. debug_traceTransaction 0x072c5d03d68ef5ca8a01cdb8ba2af73011301f69b8e329e3ae0b3a9ce9c6ff8e with the default struct logger plus prestateTracer: 57 SSTOREs, none to a new slot.
Possible solution

Raise MinEstimatedGasLimit for Commit and Reveal to at least 1,000,000, above the observed 738,786, or make it configurable. The 33% buffer on successful estimates can stay; the floor is what fails when the estimate comes back from a cheaper path or fails.

Claim uses the same floor, but I did not measure it here. #5473 notes a claim costs roughly 1.5 times a commit or reveal, so its floor should come from a measurement under Glamsterdam rather than this number.

Related: open PR #5473 lowers MinEstimatedGasLimit from 500,000 to 250,000. Under Glamsterdam that floor would cover even fewer commits and reveals (reveal needs about 740,000, commit about 525,000), so the two changes should be considered together.

AI Disclosure
  • This issue contains suggestions and text generated by an LLM.
  • I have reviewed the AI generated content thoroughly.
  • I possess the technical expertise to responsibly review the AI generated content mentioned in this issue.
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