Since its creation, Ethereum has faced a major dilemma: how to maintain its decentralization while increasing its processing capacity? Today, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, Dankrad Feist, proposes an ambitious initiative: EIP-9698, a four-year plan to increase the network’s gas limit by 100 times, bringing Ethereum to a theoretical speed of 2,000 transactions per second. A small technical revolution… but also strategic.

Why Ethereum wants to increase its gas limit by 100x

The idea of massively increasing the gas limit did not arise from a sudden whim. For several years, Ethereum has been criticized for its slowness and high transaction costs, while Solana and other fast chains attract users seeking smoothness. With EIP-9698, Ethereum aims to reverse this trend.

Specifically, the goal is to raise the current gas limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion, enabling up to 6,000 transactions per block. By comparison, today Ethereum barely reaches 20 TPS in the best cases; after implementing this proposal, the network could target 2,000 TPS, a genuine breakthrough.

According to Feist, the current gas limit adjustment mechanism, based on validator votes, “lacks coordination and predictability“.

The introduction of a predefined exponential growth would provide a clear trajectory adapted to hardware and software progress. As a contributor on X also points out:

100x means: 3.6B gas limit, 2,000 TPS, 6,000 transactions per block.

The principle of EIP-9698 is based on an automation integrated into Ethereum clients. From epoch 369017 (around June 1, 2025), clients will automatically vote to slightly increase the gas limit at each new epoch.

The applied formula is simple: increase by a factor of 10 every 164,250 epochs (about two years). After two cycles, or four years, the network’s capacity would have multiplied by one hundred. This increase requires no consensus change, only a modification of the clients’ default behavior, ensuring compatibility with older systems.

In his official text, Feist explains:

This exponential growth model guarantees a progressive but significant increase, allowing the network to adapt while aiming for ambitious throughput goals.

Users or node operators still retain the possibility to override this setting manually.

Risks and prospects of this scaling up

Even though the initiative is appealing, it is not without risks. A rapid increase in the gas limit could stress less optimized nodes and lengthen block propagation times on the network. A point Feist himself acknowledges:

A rapid increase in the gas limit could stress some nodes and prolong propagation times, but the very gradual exponential schedule gives developers time to adapt their software.

At the same time, this proposal arrives amid criticism of Ethereum’s Layer 2 strategy for having fragmented the ecosystem. Some believe that focusing on L1 (the main layer) rather than stacking second-layer solutions would restore clarity and efficiency to the network.

Note that other efforts are underway to improve Ethereum at its base. The Fusaka Hard Fork (planned for late 2025) already aims to quadruple the gas limit, while the Pectra update is expected in May.

Faced with these major developments, the Ethereum ecosystem seems determined to remain competitive against Solana, Aptos, and emerging blockchains. EIP-9698 is a strong signal: Ethereum no longer wants to be just a testing ground, but to become the infrastructure of choice for Web3 users again.

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While the EIP-9698 project could profoundly transform Ethereum, one question remains: will this bold default growth plan avoid the negative effects of congestion or technical collapse? The future of the network could well be played out at the pace of this exponential growth which could be paired with the fee reform requested by the community.