Bullish Update for Ethereum as ETH Gas Limit Poised to Boost Network

The ETH gas limit hit 60 million, up from 45 million. It’s the first major increase since 2021, when the limit sat around 30 million for years.

More than half of Ethereum’s validators approved the change. Once the threshold was passed, the network applied it automatically. There was no hard fork required.

Toni Wahrstätter from the Ethereum Foundation announced it publicly. He noted the community spent a year working toward this moment. “Just a year after the community started pushing for higher gas limits, Ethereum is now running with a 60M block gas limit,” he wrote. “That’s a 2× increase in a single year.”

What This Means for Users

Each block can now hold more transactions. The ETH gas limit determines how much computational work fits into a single block.

DeFi protocols and developers wanted this badly. When demand spikes, blocks fill up fast. That drives fees higher and slows everything down. A bigger limit should help reduce those bottlenecks, especially during busy trading periods.

The timing matters too. Ethereum is days away from the Fusaka hard fork, officially targeted for Dec. 3. This upgrade brings PeerDAS, a redesign of how the network handles data sampling. Vitalik Buterin has described it as essential for Ethereum’s scaling plans.

Why Now?

Three technical improvements made this possible. First came EIP-7623, which added safety buffers at the protocol level. It raised gas costs for certain data types, preventing worst-case scenarios where blocks get too large.

Second, client software got major performance upgrades. Teams working on Nethermind, Erigon, and other clients optimized how nodes process transactions. These updates let validators handle the higher ETH gas limit without breaking a sweat.

Third, months of testing on networks like Sepolia and Hoodi showed the system could handle the load. Block propagation stayed within the critical four-second window needed for consensus.

Zhixiong Pan, an independent blockchain researcher, pointed out these converging factors. He believes the ecosystem now has room to pursue more aggressive Layer-1 scaling without compromising stability.

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What’s Next

Buterin suggested future increases won’t be uniform. Instead of blanket raises, he wants targeted adjustments. Some operations might get more expensive while overall capacity grows.

The approach aims to balance throughput with validator efficiency. Heavy computations like complex opcodes and certain contract calls could see higher costs. But the network would still scale.

Ethereum’s Layer-2 networks posted strong numbers recently. The combined ecosystem processed 31,000 transactions per second in the last 24 hours, according to GrowThePie data.

Lighter, a zero-knowledge rollup focused on perpetuals, handled about 5,455 TPS. Base came in at 137 TPS. Other rollups added smaller amounts but kept the throughput steady.

Some developers already want a 100 million ETH gas limit. But challenges remain. State bloat and cryptographic load need careful management.

For now, the 60 million mark represents a shift in strategy. Ethereum held steady at 30 million for nearly four years. The network prioritized stability over growth during that time.

That era is over. Ethereum is scaling with data, not just caution. The ETH gas limit increase proves it.

At the time of writing the article, Ethereum (ETH) is trading at $2,997.67, up by 3.15% in the past 24 hours.

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