- The gas limit has not changed in three years
- The Mainnet’s capacity and throughput will increase with a higher limit
- This would also increase the risk of hacks and spam
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin encouraged a moderate gas limit increase to improve Ethereum Mainnet throughput, Cointelegraph wrote. During a Reddit talk on Jan. 10, he pointed out that the gas limit had remained unchanged over the past three years, the longest interval ever in the history of the Mainnet.
What is a gas limit in crypto?
In the case of Ethereum, the gas limit is the upper limit of gas that can be used to perform transactions or smart contracts per block. This is the fee charged to execute a contract or conduct a transaction on the blockchain.
Validators set a limit to make sure that the blocks are the right size, which affects Mainnet performance and synchronization. They can also adjust the limit dynamically in the course of block production within certain parameters.
The limit has increased 10 times in 9 years
According to Buterin’s calculations, the optimal increase would be from 30 million to around 40 million, implying a rise of 33%.
When Ethereum was created in 2015, the average gas limit was around 3 million gas. With use and adoption of the Ethereum Mainnet, it has increased over time.
Pros and cons of the proposal
The Mainnet’s capacity and throughput increases correspondingly as a higher gas limit enables more transactions per block. As a downside, it increases the risk of hacks and spam and the load on hardware.
According to Etherscan data cited by Cointelegraph, average gas prices on Ethereum are currently just under $2, or around 35 gwei. A gwei is one billionth of an ether.
Gas prices have been increasing this year. The more complex a smart contract operation is, the higher the price. The price reached a record 150 gwei in May 2023, surging again in November amid inscriptions hype.
