Okay, so picture this: Ethereum, the big boss of smart contracts, has this thing called a gas limit. Think of it like the fuel gauge on your car, but for how much stuff can fit into one block (a bundle of transactions and actions processed together). Right now, that limit sits at 36 million gas. It’s been creeping up over the years, starting super low back in 2015, like maybe 5,000 gas per block, which is wild to think about now.
- Ethereum’s gas limit, currently at 36 million, dictates the amount of work that can be included in a single block. A proposal suggests increasing this limit dramatically over time.
- EIP-9698 proposes a gradual increase to 3.6 billion gas over four years, potentially allowing Ethereum to handle up to 2,000 transactions per second.
- While a higher gas limit could improve transaction speeds, concerns exist about the strain on network infrastructure and block propagation times.
Well, one of the smart folks working on Ethereum, a researcher named Dankrad Feist, just tossed out a really big idea. He put forward a proposal, an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP), that basically says, “Hey, let’s crank this gas limit way, way up.” Not just a little bump, mind you. We’re talking a hundredfold increase over time.
His plan, EIP-9698, isn’t about flipping a switch tomorrow. It suggests a slow, steady climb. The idea is that the programs that run the Ethereum network (called clients) would agree to boost the limit following a set schedule. It would start in June 2025 and aim for tenfold jumps every couple of years.
If this actually happens as Feist laid it out, we’d see the gas limit go from that 36 million it is now all the way up to a whopping 3.6 billion over four years. That’s a massive change. It would make the main Ethereum network, the base layer (Layer 1), much faster at handling things.
Feist figures this predictable, step-by-step growth makes sense. He wrote that it helps create a “sustainable and transparent” path for the gas limit. It lines up with how computers and the network itself are expected to get better over time.
What does a jump like that mean in plain English? More stuff gets done in each block. A lot more. One developer in the Ethereum world, Fabrice Cheng, pointed out that this could theoretically let Ethereum handle up to 2,000 transactions every second. That’s a big leap from where it is now, which is somewhere between 15 and 30 transactions per second on the base layer.
EIP-9698: Deterministic Gas Limit Growth Schedule by Dankrad Feist
This EIP proposes a deterministic gas limit growth schedule, starting in June 2025 (epoch 164250) with a 10x increase every two years (164250 epochs).
This would lead to a 100x increase over 4 years (36M -> 3.6B),…
https://x.com/fabdarice/status/1916583945438953644
Now, increasing the gas limit isn’t without its worries. Feist knows this. He mentioned things like it putting a strain on computers running the network that aren’t super-optimized. It could also mean it takes longer for information about new blocks to spread across the network (block propagation times). But he argues that because the increase is slow and steady, the people running nodes (the computers that make up the network) and the developers building stuff on Ethereum will have plenty of time to get ready and make things run smoother.
This big proposal comes right after another idea popped up from some Ethereum researchers, including Feist himself. That separate proposal, EIP-7935, suggested a smaller, quicker increase to 150 million gas. That one might happen later this year as part of a network upgrade called Fusaka.
So, what exactly is this “gas limit” thing anyway? Good question. Think of gas as the unit of work on Ethereum. Every time you do something – send some ETH, use a decentralized app, play a game on the network – it costs gas. It’s like paying for the computer power needed to make it happen. The gas limit is just the maximum amount of this work (gas) that can be packed into a single block.
Users pay for this gas using ETH, and the price of gas changes depending on how busy the network is. If lots of people want to do stuff, gas prices go up. If not many people are using it, prices drop. Increasing the limit means more total work can fit in one block, which generally means more transactions or more complex actions can happen in that block.
Ethereum has taken some flak over the years because its main network isn’t super fast compared to some others. It processes maybe 15 to 30 transactions a second, like we said. Chains like Solana can handle tens of thousands. Newer ones like Aptos and Sui boast high numbers too. Ethereum has always focused more on being really decentralized and secure, which is great, but it hasn’t been the speediest kid on the block.
It’s kind of funny, though. Even with the base layer not being lightning fast, gas fees on Ethereum have been pretty low lately, often just a tiny fraction of an ETH. This has been the case for months. Why? Well, part of it is a recent upgrade called proto-danksharding (EIP-4844) that made data cheaper for certain types of scaling solutions. And a big part of it is that a lot of the action has moved off the main network.
Ethereum’s main plan for getting bigger, laid out by co-founder Vitalik Buterin, is all about something called “rollup-centric scaling.” This means the heavy lifting – most of the transactions – happens on separate networks built on top of Ethereum, called Layer 2s or rollups. Think of names like Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, or the ZK Rollups. The main Ethereum network (Layer 1) then acts like a secure vault, checking the work done by these Layer 2s and storing the important data.
Some folks look at this and scratch their heads a bit. They argue that relying so much on Layer 2s adds extra layers of complication. It can feel a bit fragmented, like the network is split into different neighborhoods. There are also worries about centralization, because many of these Layer 2s use a single computer (called a sequencer) to handle transactions before they get sent back to Ethereum. If the main Ethereum network could handle more transactions itself, it might compete better with those chains that are built for speed right from the start.
So, this proposal to dramatically increase the gas limit is a big deal. It suggests a future where the base Ethereum layer could potentially do a whole lot more work on its own. It’s a long-term vision, starting slow but aiming high. It will be interesting to see how the community discusses it and if this exponential growth plan ever becomes reality.
