Ethereum’s developer community plans a dramatic fourfold increase in the network’s gas limit, which is poised to become the flagship feature of the upcoming Fusaka hard fork.
The proposal suggests raising Ethereum’s layer 1 gas limit to 150 million units, up from the current cap of approximately 36 million, as outlined in Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 9678 and introduced by Sophia Gold of the Ethereum Foundation’s protocol support team.
The Fusaka hard fork aims to follow the Pectra upgrade, slated for May. Fusaka—and its headline gas limit increase—may start as early as late 2025.
The Push to Scale Ethereum
Ethereum’s popularity has led to persistent network congestion and high transaction fees, especially during periods of peak demand. With the average gas limit around 36 million following a recent validator-approved increase, developers see an urgent need to boost throughput without waiting for complex protocol changes or layer 2 adoption.
Each Ethereum block could include significantly more transactions and data, enabling the network to handle higher volumes of activity and better serve the growing ecosystem of decentralized applications, NFTs, and DeFi protocols by quadrupling the gas limit.
Anticipated Proposal Risks
Developers expect that raising the gas limit may expose previously undetected bugs or performance bottlenecks in Ethereum client software. To mitigate this, the gas limit increase features as an EIP in the Fusaka hard fork to ensure that all stakeholders align and prepare for the transition.
The EIP will coordinate client defaults and ensure all software implementations are ready for implementation of the change when Fusaka goes live, even though validators ultimately set the gas limit.
If a 4x gas limit increase is successful, it may ease congestion and reduce fees for Ethereum users worldwide. Furthermore, it would strengthen Ethereum’s standing as the top smart contract platform, able to grow to accommodate the needs of a growing user base.
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