In the past, many people still had the impression that the TPS (transactions per second) of ETH was "15 transactions per second." However, with ongoing protocol optimizations, the peak TPS of Ethereum has now increased to about 60, representing a 4-fold increase.
Although this change is related to continuous optimization over the years, the most direct reason can still be attributed to the simple and effective adjustment of the GAS Limit from the previous cap of 15 million to a new cap of 36 million.
Recently, ETH is about to raise the GAS Limit to a maximum of 60 million again.
What is GAS Limit?
Each of us needs to pay Gas as transaction fees when using ETH. Gas Limit, as the name suggests, is the upper limit of Gas that can be accommodated in each block. The higher this limit, the more transactions the block can handle, and the network speed increases accordingly.
Among the many scalability paths, increasing the Gas Limit can be said to be the most immediate method.
More importantly, this adjustment does not require a hard fork, as the Gas Limit is a dynamic parameter in Ethereum, and PoS nodes can make fine-tuning under the existing protocol rules.
In other words, the protocol itself allows each new block producer to adjust the Gas Limit by ± 1/1024 compared to the parent block, which is itself a part of the consensus mechanism. This is also completely different from Bitcoin's mechanism of fixing the block size at 1 MB.
So increasing the Gas Limit does not require a system upgrade or code modification; as long as PoS nodes continuously "signal" support during block production, it can drive the network to gradually adopt this change. Currently, there are over 1 million validators on the Ethereum network, and as long as a certain support ratio is reached, the network will automatically transition to the new Gas limit and ensure compatibility for all nodes.
As of now, about 15% of validators have chosen to support the setting of 60 million Gas. Ebunker has also participated in support, as a non-custodial node service provider, we always pay attention to the balance between Ethereum network performance and decentralization. Since this is a voluntary process, there is still a considerable number of nodes maintaining the old version (for example, 30 million) configuration.
Increasing the Gas Limit does not mean that PoS nodes can earn more money; in fact, it is likely to earn less.
Since the launch of EIP-1559, Ethereum's Base Fee has been directly burned, and validators can only earn tips that users actively add. Once the gas limit is increased, it means that the processing power of the entire network is increased, transaction congestion is reduced, and the pressure to compete for tips is also reduced, and the tip amount will naturally decrease. So, to some extent, the increase in the Gas Limit actually reduces the income of validators, and the amount of ETH burned further increases.
Therefore, under such an incentive mechanism, choosing to support validators with a Gas Limit of 60 million can be said to be selfless.
In addition, the community recently proposed a controversial proposal EIP-9698. This proposal suggests raising the Gas Limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion over the next four years, aiming to increase Ethereum's TPS to around 2000, directly targeting the current high-performance chain Solana. However, this idea is clearly somewhat radical.
In theory, as long as the hardware performance of the nodes is strong enough, the Gas Limit can indeed be continuously adjusted upwards. However, the reality is that the Ethereum network has over 1 million active validators, which needs to accommodate a wide range of participants. In contrast, some other high-performance public chains have only hundreds of validators, creating a gap of up to ten thousand times between the two.
Even the proposal to raise the Gas Limit from 36 million to 60 million was only able to enter the network adjustment rhythm after the Pectra upgrade brought execution load optimization.
According to research by ethpandaops, after increasing the Gas Limit to 60 million, about 90% of blocks can be discovered for the first time within 1016 milliseconds. Compared to before, the block propagation delay has slightly increased, but still remains within an acceptable range.
However, 66% of nodes in the Ethereum network need to receive the block and its accompanying blob data in full within 4 seconds to ensure that the block is considered valid. Based on this propagation limit, the theoretical upper limit of the gas limit calculated by the testnet is about 150 million. Therefore, under the current architecture, it is difficult to implement the vision of EIP-9698 in the short term.
Of course, if Ethereum implements a "large node / small node" architecture in the future, such as allowing nodes that stake 2048 ETH to handle higher loads, while 32 ETH nodes handle smaller blocks, it may open up new space for further expansion.
So, although everyone often jokes that the ETH Gas Price keeps hitting new lows, and the "noble chain" no longer exists, this may not only be due to market changes, but also because Ethereum itself is indeed becoming faster, more efficient, and more accessible.
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Ethereum has raised the Gas Limit to 60 million, and the expansion path is becoming clearer.
In the past, many people still had the impression that the TPS (transactions per second) of ETH was "15 transactions per second." However, with ongoing protocol optimizations, the peak TPS of Ethereum has now increased to about 60, representing a 4-fold increase.
Although this change is related to continuous optimization over the years, the most direct reason can still be attributed to the simple and effective adjustment of the GAS Limit from the previous cap of 15 million to a new cap of 36 million.
Recently, ETH is about to raise the GAS Limit to a maximum of 60 million again.
What is GAS Limit?
Each of us needs to pay Gas as transaction fees when using ETH. Gas Limit, as the name suggests, is the upper limit of Gas that can be accommodated in each block. The higher this limit, the more transactions the block can handle, and the network speed increases accordingly.
Among the many scalability paths, increasing the Gas Limit can be said to be the most immediate method.
More importantly, this adjustment does not require a hard fork, as the Gas Limit is a dynamic parameter in Ethereum, and PoS nodes can make fine-tuning under the existing protocol rules.
In other words, the protocol itself allows each new block producer to adjust the Gas Limit by ± 1/1024 compared to the parent block, which is itself a part of the consensus mechanism. This is also completely different from Bitcoin's mechanism of fixing the block size at 1 MB.
So increasing the Gas Limit does not require a system upgrade or code modification; as long as PoS nodes continuously "signal" support during block production, it can drive the network to gradually adopt this change. Currently, there are over 1 million validators on the Ethereum network, and as long as a certain support ratio is reached, the network will automatically transition to the new Gas limit and ensure compatibility for all nodes.
As of now, about 15% of validators have chosen to support the setting of 60 million Gas. Ebunker has also participated in support, as a non-custodial node service provider, we always pay attention to the balance between Ethereum network performance and decentralization. Since this is a voluntary process, there is still a considerable number of nodes maintaining the old version (for example, 30 million) configuration.
Since the launch of EIP-1559, Ethereum's Base Fee has been directly burned, and validators can only earn tips that users actively add. Once the gas limit is increased, it means that the processing power of the entire network is increased, transaction congestion is reduced, and the pressure to compete for tips is also reduced, and the tip amount will naturally decrease. So, to some extent, the increase in the Gas Limit actually reduces the income of validators, and the amount of ETH burned further increases.
Therefore, under such an incentive mechanism, choosing to support validators with a Gas Limit of 60 million can be said to be selfless.
In addition, the community recently proposed a controversial proposal EIP-9698. This proposal suggests raising the Gas Limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion over the next four years, aiming to increase Ethereum's TPS to around 2000, directly targeting the current high-performance chain Solana. However, this idea is clearly somewhat radical.
In theory, as long as the hardware performance of the nodes is strong enough, the Gas Limit can indeed be continuously adjusted upwards. However, the reality is that the Ethereum network has over 1 million active validators, which needs to accommodate a wide range of participants. In contrast, some other high-performance public chains have only hundreds of validators, creating a gap of up to ten thousand times between the two.
Even the proposal to raise the Gas Limit from 36 million to 60 million was only able to enter the network adjustment rhythm after the Pectra upgrade brought execution load optimization.
According to research by ethpandaops, after increasing the Gas Limit to 60 million, about 90% of blocks can be discovered for the first time within 1016 milliseconds. Compared to before, the block propagation delay has slightly increased, but still remains within an acceptable range.
! Ethereum raised the Gas Limit to 60 million again, and the expansion path is gradually becoming clear
However, 66% of nodes in the Ethereum network need to receive the block and its accompanying blob data in full within 4 seconds to ensure that the block is considered valid. Based on this propagation limit, the theoretical upper limit of the gas limit calculated by the testnet is about 150 million. Therefore, under the current architecture, it is difficult to implement the vision of EIP-9698 in the short term.
Of course, if Ethereum implements a "large node / small node" architecture in the future, such as allowing nodes that stake 2048 ETH to handle higher loads, while 32 ETH nodes handle smaller blocks, it may open up new space for further expansion.
So, although everyone often jokes that the ETH Gas Price keeps hitting new lows, and the "noble chain" no longer exists, this may not only be due to market changes, but also because Ethereum itself is indeed becoming faster, more efficient, and more accessible.
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