The change in gas limit was carried out with the support of more than half of the validators, so no hard fork is needed.
Ethereum increased the gas limit for the first time since 2021. Image: Reddit
Ethereum has just made an important adjustment to the gas limit on the network, the first time since 2021.
L1 is scaling.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 4, 2025
A big shoutout to all the developers working on EIP-4444 (history expiry), statelessness (see the new binary tree EIP! https://t.co/ajKpF66BKw ), client efficiency upgrades, and other features that will make higher L1 gas limits decentralization-friendly. https://t.co/DNsHPAhiia
According to data from gaslimit.pics, Ethereum has increased the average gas limit to nearly 32 million units in the past two days, exceeding the previous 30 million gas threshold. This move was made after more than 50% of the validators voted in favor, without the need for a hard fork. Some analysts predict this limit may continue to increase to 36 million units in the future.
Chart showing Ethereum's gas limit from January 05 to February 05, 2025. Source: Gaslimit.pics
This is the first time Ethereum has changed the gas limit since The Merge - the transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism. The previous adjustment took place in 2021, when Ethereum doubled the gas limit from 15 million to 30 million units.
Increasing the gas limit has two main implications:
- Increased transaction processing capacity: The gas limit determines the number of transactions that can be processed in each Block. When this limit is increased, Ethereum can process more transactions, helping to reduce network congestion and improve transaction processing speed.
- Reduced transaction fees: When more transactions are processed in a Block, the competition to have transactions confirmed will decrease, leading to lower gas fees. This is good news for users who frequently use the Ethereum network to transfer assets or conduct other DeFi transactions.
However, there are also some negative consequences to increasing the gas limit:
- Larger Block size, which means that transaction verification will consume more resources.
- Increased pressure on the validator nodes, as their hardware needs to be more powerful to process the larger Blocks. This could impact the decentralization of Ethereum, as only validators with strong hardware will be able to continue participating in the network.
On Ethereum, gas is the unit of measurement for the computational power required to perform operations such as transactions or smart contract functions. Each operation has a corresponding gas fee, ensuring that users only pay for the resources their actions require.
The gas limit (gas limit) is the maximum total gas that can be used in a Block. If the total gas of the transactions exceeds this limit, the transactions will be delayed to the next Block or have to compete to be processed, based on the gas price the user is willing to pay.
Regarding the price, Ethereum (ETH) has had a record-breaking adjustment on 03/02, reaching the lowest level since March 2021. The second-largest cryptocurrency in the world is gradually losing its position to Bitcoin, as the ETH/BTC conversion rate has dropped to 0.03 BTC, nearly 50% lower than a year ago. ETH/BTC once reached a peak of 0.08 in 2022, but the value of Ethereum has been steadily declining since then.
ETH token price movements over the past year. Source: CoinGecko (05/02/2025)
Despite the decline, Ethereum is about to receive the Pectra upgrade, which is expected to double the scalability of the layer-2 solutions. Specifically, Pectra will increase the number of "blobs" from 3 to 6, allowing layer-2 networks to process more transactions without increasing the gas fees on Ethereum. Currently, each Ethereum Block can only contain a maximum of 3 blobs. Will Pectra be enough to help ETH regain its position over BTC? The community is closely monitoring the impact of this upgrade in the coming period.
Pectra, expected in March, will increase the blob target from 3 to 6, doubling the capacity of L2s.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 4, 2025
IMO we should make the blob target also staker-voted, so that it can increase in respose to technology improvements without waiting for hard forks.
Compiled by Coin68
