50%+ of Ethereum validators signal support to increase ETH gas limit

More than half of Ethereum validators have signaled support for increasing the network’s gas limit past 30 million. Developers believe the move will allow more transactions to be processed within a single block.

According to Gaslimit.pics, a tracker monitoring validator support for gas limit extensions, 52% of Ethereum validators have expressed approval for raising the gas limit as of February 4. This is the first time since August 2021 that the network’s gas limits have been increased. 

The validator vote beat the 50% mark needed for planned network changes. This is owing to Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. The mechanism allows them to modify node configurations to support an increased gas limit. 

According to Blockscout transaction data shared by a crypto enthusiast on X, the gas limit went past 34M today at around 5:50 AM GMT.

Developers set sights on Pectra Fork to introduce more upgrades 

Popular voices among the Ethereum community, including co-founder Vitalik Buterin, have lauded the move to increase gas limits. 

In an X post, Buterin thanked developers working on EIP-4444, a proposal that will push out the requirement of full nodes(historical data) to store data that is more than one year old. He said this will make Layer 1 (L1) gas limits “decentralization-friendly.”

Buterin went on to say he is advocating for the upcoming Pectra fork, which is expected to go live in March. The upgrade will introduce changes to blob transactions, increasing the blob target from three to six. Like the gas limit adjustment, Pectra’s changes will be determined by validator votes.

Pectra, expected in March, will increase the blob target from 3 to 6, doubling the capacity of L2s.

IMO we should make the blob target also staker-voted, so that it can increase in respose to technology improvements without waiting for hard forks.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 4, 2025

Ethereum core devs have been on the Pectra upgrade for a while. If the proposal goes through, it will reduce the risks tied to larger crypto-block sizes. 

One of the main components of Pectra is EIP-7623 seeks to limit worst-case block sizes by increasing the cost of call data-heavy transactions. The adjustment is designed to mitigate denial-of-service (DoS) risks while allowing for higher transaction capacity. 

Then, the EIP-7691 proposal will increase the maximum number of blobs per block from 6 to 9.  The change will allow developers to analyze the network’s performance under higher blob counts, helping refine future upgrades related to block size and composition.

Ethereum community debate gas limit cap  

While the majority of the community supports raising Ethereum’s gas limit, the ideal threshold is still a matter of contention. Some supporters have proposed increasing the limit to 36 million gas to enhance Layer 1 capacity and drive innovation. Others, such as ex-Ether developer Eric Connor, have started initiatives like the pumpthegas.org website to push for an increase to 60 million.

However, according to an Ethereum research paper published last December, developers argue that increasing limits to either level could cause network instability.

Ethereum has consensus-layer (CL) clients that act as constraints. CLs limit the network’s specifications cap to a maximum acceptable uncompressed block size. The gossip propagation is capped at 10 MiB. The paper explained that raising the gas limit to 60 million could generate blocks exceeding this threshold and may crash Ethereum, or even make it vulnerable to attacks.

They cautioned that until client-level constraints are adjusted, significant increases beyond 36 million gas may not be feasible. 

The sentiments were further supported by Ethereum client Eregon lead Giulio Rebuffo, who advised validators to wait for the Pectra upgrade, in a December 17 X post.

“I’m advocating for these EIPs to scale Ethereum’s L1: EIP-7823 for ModExp reprice, EIP-7732 for ePBS, EIP-7825 to limit max transaction gas, and EIP-4444 for history expiry. Once implemented, we can think about raising gas limits beyond 60 million,” Rebuffo denoted.

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