Vitalik: It is recommended to increase the Gas limit by 33% to increase throughput

Author: Martin Young, Cointelegraph; Compiler: Songxue, Golden Finance

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin advocates a "moderate" increase in gas limits to potentially increase network throughput.

On January 10, during a Reddit “Ask and Answer” event organized by the Ethereum Foundation’s research team, Buterin pointed out that the gas limit has not been increased in nearly three years.

“Honestly, I think a modest increase in the Gas limit would be reasonable even today,”Buterin said at the research team’s 11th AMA express.

Buterin also did some simple calculations and said this would meanGas would increase to about 40 million. According to Etherscan, the current gas limit is 30 million, so this represents a 33% increase.

Ethereum average gas limit over time. Source: Etherscan

After the birth of Ethereum in 2015, the average gas limit was about 3 million, and the limit continued to increase as the network was used and adopted.

The Ethereum gas limit refers to the maximum gas that can be spent to execute a transaction or smart contract in each block. Gas is the fee required to conduct transactions or execute contracts on the blockchain.

The Gas limit is set to ensure that the block is not too large, otherwise it will affect network performance and synchronization. Validators can also dynamically adjust gas limits within certain parameters when generating blocks.

Increasing the gas limit allows more transactions to enter each block, which theoretically increases the overall throughput and capacity of the network. However, it also increases the load on the hardware and the potential risk of network spam and attacks.

According to data from Etherscan, the current average gas price (i.e., the cost of Ethereum transactions) is about 35 gwei or $1.89. However, they have been increasing since early 2024 and are much higher for complex smart contract operations.

Network gas charges soared to a 2023 high of 150 Gwei in May due to the Inscription craze. gwei is a denomination of Ethereum, representing one billionth of an ETH.

In November, Ethereum and Bitcoin users reignited the scalability debate as another round of Inscription hype caused gas fees to spike.