• Ethereum researcher Dankrad Feist has proposed EIP-9698, aiming to 100x the network’s gas limit over 4 years, boosting throughput to ~2,000 TPS.
• The gas limit would grow gradually starting June 2025, reaching 3.6 billion and fitting around 6,000 transactions per block.
• EIP-9698 signals a renewed focus on Layer 1 scaling, complementing Layer 2 solutions and preparing for future upgrades like Fusaka and Pectra.

Ethereum could soon see a massive boost in transaction throughput, thanks to a new proposal from Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist. On April 27, Feist introduced Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 9698, which outlines a plan to increase the network’s gas limit by 100 times over the next 4 years. If implemented, Ethereum’s transactions per second (TPS) could skyrocket to around 2,000 TPS, significantly strengthening its position against fast competitors like Solana.

Under the proposed EIP-9698, Ethereum would adopt a deterministic gas limit growth schedule beginning at epoch 369017, estimated to be around June 1, 2025. Over roughly 4 years, the network’s gas limit would increase steadily by a factor of 10. At the end of this period, a final 10x boost would be introduced, taking the current gas limit of 36 million to a staggering 3.6 billion.

According to Feist, this method would offer a sustainable and transparent way to increase network capacity without sudden shocks, aligning with expected advancements in hardware and protocol efficiency. This gradual growth could allow around 6,000 transactions to fit into each Ethereum block.

Currently, ETH can reach up to 20 TPS in blocks containing simple transactions. A 100-fold gas limit expansion would push the network’s performance to around 2,000 TPS, a huge leap that could make Ethereum far more competitive with high-speed blockchains like Solana, which processes between 800 and 1,050 TPS and claims a theoretical maximum of 65,000 TPS.

This change would directly address concerns about Ethereum’s transaction throughput limitations, which have long been seen as a barrier to mainstream adoption and DeFi scalability.

Feist emphasized that Ethereum client teams would need to vote on EIP-9698 for it to be adopted. While the proposal promises significant scalability improvements, it also raises concerns about node operability and block propagation delays. Feist acknowledged these risks but argued that the gradual, predictable increments would give developers and node operators ample time to adapt and optimize their systems.

“The exponential schedule with very gradual increments per epoch gives node operators and developers ample time to adapt and optimize,” said Feist.

The last major gas limit increase occurred in February 2025, when validators agreed to raise it from 30 million to 36 million. Before that, the London Hard Fork in August 2021 had doubled the gas limit from 15 million to 30 million.

The introduction of EIP-9698 reflects a broader shift in the Ethereum community’s approach to scalability. After years of prioritizing Layer 2 solutions such as Optimistic Rollups and zk-Rollups, developers are now returning attention to Layer 1 improvements.

While Layer 2 scaling has relieved mainnet congestion, critics argue it has led to a fragmented ecosystem, with liquidity spread across multiple rollups and reduced interoperability, making the user experience more complex.

EIP-9698 also comes as Ethereum developers prepare for the upcoming Fusaka hard fork, which proposes a fourfold gas limit increase under EIP-9678. Fusaka is anticipated to roll out in late 2025, further pushing Ethereum’s scalability efforts forward. Meanwhile, the next major network upgrade, Pectra, is scheduled for May 2025 and is expected to introduce foundational optimizations.

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