Ethereum network throughput was checked up on Sunday as the blockchain gas limit rose above 37.3 million units. This is more than 3% higher than the levels observed later last week, with some blocks suggesting higher gas limits.
Gas limit refers to the maximum amount of gas charges or ether (ETH) that users are willing to pay to trade or carry out smart contracts on the Ethereum network. This acts as a limit to computational work that can be performed on the blockchain, preventing excessive use of network resources.
Ethereum gas limits have been raised to 45 million after nearly 50% of validators supported a proposal to reduce costs
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, confirmed on the X-Post on July 20th that Ethereum’s gas limits have been increased to 45 million units from the current 36 million. The overwhelming majority of validators signaled support for the update. We believe this will reduce transaction costs and allow for improved network scaling.
According to Gaslimits data, more than 49.3% or 500,000 Validator addresses have agreed to increase the gas limit from existing ranges. This represents the first important climb since February, when it was raised from 30 million to 36 million units.
The latest limit is significantly lower than the previously proposed 60 million cases, but is up 25% from the current level. Higher gas limits lead to increased transaction throughput at the base layer (L1) of Ethereum, thereby increasing transaction capacity.
Defi Infrastructure Firm Sumcap reports that the results of increased limits are already visible on the network, with gas usage gradually aligned with Ethereum’s long-term target of 150 million units per block. According to chainspect data, network throughput hit 18 transactions per second (TPS) over the weekend, up from the 15 TPS limit after the February update.
Ethereum developers have long flocked to raise Ethereum gas restrictions and launched a “Pump the Gas” campaign in March 2024, suggesting increasing the limit from 30 million to 40 million, claiming to reduce Layer-1 trading fees. However, some developers are concerned about raising the bar. Blockchain Experience stocks from resource-intensive transactions.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposes to 1677 million units of restricted gas for individual transactions, balancing performance and security
To address these risks, we use butarine and Ethereum Researcher Toni Wahrstätter recently proposed the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7983, which aims to apply a cap to gas usage per transaction. EIP-7983 limits the maximum gas for 16.77 million individual transactions. The duo argued that this limit could improve blockchain performance without limiting security.
Under Ethereum’s current network architecture, a single transaction theoretically consumes the entire block-wide gas limit, poses the threat of a denial of service (DOS) attack that can ultimately lead to unpredictable network behavior. By limiting individual transactions, EIP-7983 tries to distribute gas consumption more evenly across the chain, reducing the chances of a single transaction overwhelming block capacity.
This proposal is designed to improve Ethereum compatibility with Zero Knowledge Virtual Machines (ZKVMs) by encouraging larger transactions to be split into smaller chunks. According to the draft, transactions that require gas units above the 16.77 million limit will be rejected during block verification and not included in the new block. CAP is independent of the overall limits of block gas and can be adjusted by approximately 0.1% per block within existing consensus rules.
Buterin and Wahrstätter’s reason for cap to choose 16.77 million to balance Ethereum computing complexity and performance claims it will address advanced distributed financial (DEFI) use cases and smart contract deployments without bringing unnecessary risk. Although EIP-7983 is not backward compatible for transactions exceeding the new limit, the authors noted that most existing ETH transactions are far below CAP, minimizing the impact on normal users and developers.
In May, Vitalik took inspiration from Bitcoin’s more minimalist approach, calling for simplification of Ethereum’s basic protocols to increase network efficiency, security and accessibility. At the time, he proposed restructuring the core architecture of the blockchain across its implementation (POS) consensus, transaction execution, and shared components to achieve a much more lean design within the next five years. He argued that increasing network complexity would result in longer development cycles, higher costs and increased security risks.
Ethereum Network Activity Spikes are consistent with the surge in ETH prices as a result of the Ministry of Corporate Treasury and ETF adoption
Meanwhile, Etherscan data shows that Ethereum’s network activity has seen a significant surge in recent months, with daily transactions increasing from around 1.1 million in April to 1.4 million in July.
This enhanced network activity is closely linked to rising ether prices, earning a whopping 54% over the past month. On Sunday, ETH reached a seven-month high of $3,800, with the corporate Treasury Department and US-listed Ether Spot Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFS) continuing to accumulate the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
According to data from StrategiceThreserve.xyz, approximately 56 companies own 1.76 million ETH of managed assets (AUM), accounting for 1.46% of total supply, while ETFs own 5.24 million ETH ($20 billion) in AUM, accounting for 4.34% of total supply.
At the time of writing, Ether (ETH) traded for $3,813, an increase of 1.58% over the past 24 hours.
