In a bold move to enhance transaction throughput and reduce costs, Ethereum’s leading developers have initiated a campaign to elevate the network’s gas limit from the current 30 million to an ambitious 40 million. This strategic proposal, if implemented, promises to trim transaction fees by a substantial 15-30%.
The spearheads of this initiative, Eric Connor and Mariano Conti, previously pivotal at MakerDAO, have launched ‘Pump The Gas’—a dedicated platform aimed at rallying the Ethereum community around this pivotal change. The site serves as a hub for education and action, elucidating the benefits of a higher gas limit and its role in effectively scaling the network.
The gas limit, essentially the cap on transaction processing fees per block, acts as a throttle for the network’s capacity. By pushing this limit up, Ethereum could see a 33% surge in its daily transaction handling capabilities.
Connor and Conti have laid out a roadmap for stakeholders—ranging from individual stakers to large client teams—to partake in this network evolution. The call to action includes technical adjustments to client configurations and a collective push towards making the 40 million gas limit the new norm.
The initiative has already seen proactive steps taken by community validators, with a RocketPool validator proposing a block that aligns with the new gas limit. The response from the crypto sphere has been optimistic, with constructive dialogue on streamlining the transition.
Further backing the cause, Ethereum software developer Dankrad Feist has put forth additional measures to bolster the network’s capacity, such as a further gas limit hike and adjustments to the blob count—a reference to the data units introduced in the Dencun upgrade that significantly cut Layer 2 solution costs.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, has also weighed in, advocating for a “modest” increase in the gas limit, which has remained static for an unprecedented duration in the network’s history.
As Ethereum stands on the cusp of this significant upgrade, the community’s engagement and the developers’ foresight signal a promising horizon for the blockchain’s scalability and efficiency.
