Ethereum core developers launch action to increase gas fee limit

Author: Martin Young, CoinTelegraph; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Ethereum developers have launched a new initiative aimed at increasing the long-term static Gas limit of the blockchain network, arguing that This change could be used to help scale Ethereum.

On March 20, Ethereum core developer Eric Connor and former MakerDAO smart contract leader Mariano Conti launched A new website called "pump thegas" was launched to increase the Ethereum Gas limit from 30 million to 40 million, which they said will reduce Ethereum Layer 1 transaction fees. "This could result in a 15% to 33% reduction in Layer 1 transaction fees," Connor said in a March 19 X post, before adding, “We are calling on individual stakers, account teams, mining pools, and community members to help.”

The #pumpthegas hashtag has started to gain some support from Ethereum users, stakers, and DeFi investors on X. Conti also observed that Rocket Pool validators proposed a block with a 40 million gas limit on March 20.

Source: Eric Connor

In the past few months, there have been increasing calls to increase the gas limit of Ethereum. high. In January of this year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed increasing the gas limit to 40 million from 30 million since August 2021.

Base contributor Jesse Pollak responded that he "strongly supports" raising the Ethereum gas cap to 40 or 45 million. "We own cyberspace and it will be beneficial to all parties," he added.

The Ethereum gas limit refers to the maximum amount of gas spent executing a transaction or smart contract in each block. Gas is the fee required to conduct transactions or execute smart contracts on the network.

Ethereum Gas limit. Source: Etherscan

The website explains that each operation has a predefined gas cost, and the contract has a gas limit that cannot be exceeded during execution. This prevents malicious contracts from overloading the network through infinite loops or excessive resource consumption.

It stated: "Increasing the Gas block limit by 33% enables Layer 1 Ethereum to process more than out of 33% of the transaction load.”

It also stated that on EIP The data blobs introduced in the Dencun upgrade of -4844 help significantly reduce Layer 2 transaction fees, but cannot reduce Layer 1 fees. It added: "The combination of blob and gas limit increases can help scale L1 and L2 Ethereum."

However, Not everyone is in favor of this network tweak. Venture capitalist and Ethereum advocate Evan Van Ness said in an article on X, “I am not in favor of increasing the mainnet gas limit *today* because EIP-4844 just increased the block size.”

Source: Evan Van Ness 

Earlier this year, Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden has expressed concerns about the proposed raise, arguing that it will increase the size of the blockchain state, which contains account balances and smart contract data.

He said at the time that scale was not an issue, then said that "accessing and modifying it will become slower and slower," before adding that "there are no concrete solutions for growth yet."

Other disadvantages of increasing the gas limit include increased hardware load and the potential risk of network spam and attacks.