Ethereum News: Ethereum Could Lift Gas Limit 5x Next Year as Sassano Says 180M Is “Just the Floor”

Ethereum’s recent move to increase its block gas limit is only the beginning, according to Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano, who believes the network could see a threefold — or even fivefold — gas limit expansion over the next year.Speaking on the Bankless podcast on Friday, Sassano said the push to reach a 180 million gas limit in 2026 is not an upper target but a conservative baseline.“I think that’s the floor — that’s the minimum. I think we can go higher than that,” Sassano told host Ryan Adams. His comments came just one day after Ethereum raised its block gas limit from 45 million to 60 million, the network’s largest capacity expansion in four years.Developer consensus forming around 3x increaseSassano noted that Ethereum core developers and researchers are increasingly aligned on the desire to raise the gas limit at least threefold over the next couple of years. Some are openly discussing a fivefold increase as feasible with the right technical adjustments.“A few devs are already talking about a 5x increase within 12 months,” he said.Repricing transactions may unlock higher gas limitsA higher gas limit allows Ethereum to process more swaps, transfers and smart contract interactions per block. Sassano argued that the path to such increases lies in repricing specific transaction types, making some cheaper and others more expensive depending on computational load.“We can lower the cost of a basic ETH transfer from 21,000 gas to around 6,000 gas, a reduction of more than 70%, while keeping the gas limit the same,” he said. By redistributing gas costs based on efficiency, the network could safely support higher throughput.Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has similarly suggested raising gas costs for operations that are “relatively inefficient to process,” while freeing capacity for more common transactions.Fusaka upgrade arrives next weekThe gas-limit expansion comes as Ethereum prepares for its next major upgrade, Fusaka, slated for mainnet activation on Dec. 3. The upgrade is designed to improve scalability and lays groundwork for more ambitious throughput increases in 2026.Sassano and core developer Ben Adams co-authored the EIP tied to future gas limit reforms, aiming to include it in Ethereum’s planned Glamsterdam upgrade, expected in the first half of 2026.The increase to a 60 million gas cap was backed by more than 513,000 validators, a level of consensus that took the debate from “too risky” to “already live” in less than a year, Adams noted.Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter emphasized the speed of progress:“That’s a 2× increase in a single year — and it’s only the beginning.”