Ethereum network performance continues to improve, Gas Limit is about to be raised again

The transaction processing capacity of the Ethereum network is steadily increasing. In the past, it was generally believed that Ethereum could only handle about 15 transactions per second (TPS). However, with continuous optimization of the protocol, the peak TPS of Ethereum has now increased to about 60, a growth of more than 4 times.

This significant increase is mainly attributed to raising the Gas Limit from the original 15 million to 36 million. Now, the Ethereum network is preparing to further increase the Gas Limit to 60 million.

Gas Limit refers to the maximum amount of Gas that can be accommodated in each block. The higher this limit, the more transactions each block can process, thereby increasing the overall processing speed of the network. Among various scaling solutions, increasing the Gas Limit can be considered one of the most direct and effective methods.

It is worth noting that adjusting the Gas Limit does not require a hard fork. This is because the Gas Limit is a dynamic parameter in Ethereum, and PoS nodes can make fine-tuning adjustments under the existing protocol rules. Specifically, the protocol allows each new block producer to adjust the Gas Limit within a range of ±1/1024 relative to the parent block. This mechanism contrasts sharply with Bitcoin's practice of fixing the block size at 1MB.

Currently, about 15% of validators have chosen to support raising the Gas Limit to 60 million. This adjustment process is voluntary, so a considerable number of nodes still maintain the configuration of the old version (such as 30 million).

However, increasing the Gas Limit does not mean that PoS nodes can earn more profits. In fact, their income may decrease. Since the implementation of EIP-1559, the base fee of Ethereum is directly burned, and validators can only earn the small tips that users voluntarily attach. After the Gas Limit is increased, the overall processing capacity of the network is enhanced, transaction congestion decreases, and the pressure for competing tips also weakens, leading to a natural decline in tip amounts. Therefore, to some extent, the increase in Gas Limit may actually result in reduced income for validators, while the amount of ETH burned further increases.

Recently, the community proposed a controversial proposal EIP-9698, suggesting to raise the Gas Limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion over the next four years, aiming to increase Ethereum's TPS to about 2000. However, this idea may be too radical.

In theory, as long as the hardware performance of the nodes is strong enough, the Gas Limit can indeed be continuously increased. However, the reality is that the Ethereum network has over 1 million active validators, which need to accommodate a wide range of participants. In contrast, some high-performance public chains have only hundreds of validators, resulting in 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, after the Gas Limit is increased to 60 million, about 90% of blocks can be first discovered within 1016 milliseconds. Compared to before, the block propagation delay has slightly increased, but it remains within an acceptable range.

However, 66% of the nodes in the Ethereum network need to fully receive the block and its accompanying blob data within 4 seconds for the block to be considered valid. Based on this propagation limit, the theoretical upper limit of the Gas Limit calculated by the testnet is approximately 150 million. Therefore, under the current architecture, the vision of EIP-9698 is difficult to realize in the short term.

In the future, if Ethereum implements a "big node/small node" architecture, such as allowing nodes that stake 2048 ETH to handle higher loads, while 32 ETH nodes process smaller blocks, it may create new possibilities for further scalability.

Overall, although the Gas prices of Ethereum continue to hit new lows, this is not merely a result of market changes. In fact, the Ethereum network is becoming faster, more efficient, and more user-friendly. This progress reflects Ethereum's ongoing efforts in technology and community governance, laying the foundation for large-scale applications in the future.