Key Notes

• Ethereum researcher proposes raising gas limit from 36M to 3.6B over four years to boost network capacity.
• Planned gas limit increase could enable Ethereum to handle 2,000 transactions per second by 2026.
• Several upgrades, including EIP-4444 and EIP-7886, are being developed to improve Ethereum’s scalability and efficiency.

Ethereum

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core developers are considering raising the network’s gas limit far beyond its current level. A new proposal from one of the Ethereum Foundation’s top researchers outlines how that could happen over the next few years.

Researcher Pushes for Major Ethereum Gas Limit Increase

Dankrad Feist, a core contributor to the Ethereum Foundation, has proposed a substantial increase in the network’s gas limit in a proposal published on GitHub. EIP-9698 outlines a plan to raise the current limit of 36 million to 3.6 billion over the next four years.

According to the update, the idea is to increase the limit gradually, roughly ten times every two years. The changes would start as early as June 2025 if approved. Following a set timeline instead of sudden jumps allows the network time to adjust without overwhelming developers or node operators.

Ethereum’s base layer could eventually handle about 2,000 transactions per second if everything goes as planned. That is a big change from the 15 to 30 transactions per second it handles today.

Feist did not avoid pointing out possible issues. According to him, a higher gas limit means larger blocks. This could slow down block propagation and put more pressure on nodes that are not optimized. However, with more time to prepare and better hardware expected in the future, Feist believes it is a step worth taking.

Notably, this proposal builds on recent efforts to increase capacity at the base layer. It was stated in the report that Feist and fellow researchers Sophia Gold, Toni Wahrstätter, Carl Beek, and Alex Stokes suggested pushing the gas limit to 150 million during the upcoming Fusaka hard fork.

In a recent post on X, Wahrstätter also discussed these scaling efforts. He mentioned that the network is moving toward higher gas limits while also working on changes that would reduce storage demands and improve how blocks are processed.

Amid these trends, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a roadmap to fix privacy on the Ethereum Layer-1 chain, setting a new benchmark for protocol functionality.

More Changes Planned to Support Growth

It is worth mentioning that the gas limit plan is not the only change in the works. Developers are preparing several upgrades designed to make the network more efficient and easier to run as it scales.

One of those changes is EIP-4444. This would make it optional for nodes to keep older block history, cutting down on storage needs and helping more people run full nodes without expensive hardware.

Another proposal, EIP-7886, would give validators more time to process blocks. Right now, they only have one to two seconds. The change would extend that to around ten seconds, providing more room for systems like zkVMs that need extra time to generate proofs.

Other planned upgrades include EIP-7928, improving transaction organization for faster processing. In addition, EIP-7863 will focus on reducing unnecessary work across blocks to improve overall efficiency.

Developers expect these changes to roll out gradually over the next few years as Ethereum works toward its next big upgrade, Glamsterdam, in 2026.

Core contributors to the Pectra upgrade have given no reason to doubt that the update will go live on the mainnet. The Pectra upgrade is scheduled for launch in the first week of May 2025.

In other news, Grayscale representatives met with the SEC’s Crypto Task Force to persuade the agency to allow staking on Ethereum ETF products. These updates have sparked a 0.51% uptick in the price of Ethereum, which is now pegged at $1,810.23.

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Author
Godfrey Benjamin

Benjamin Godfrey is a blockchain enthusiast and journalist who relishes writing about the real life applications of blockchain technology and innovations to drive general acceptance and worldwide integration of the emerging technology. His desire to educate people about cryptocurrencies inspires his contributions to renowned blockchain media and sites.

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