Researcher envisions 100x Ethereum gas limit increase over 4 years

Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist on April 27th, proposed a new Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP), EIP-9698, which could theoretically grow the Ethereum mainnet’s gas limit by up to 100 times and increase the number of transactions per second to about 2,000 TPS.

Feist suggested EIP-9698 introducing a deterministic gas limit growth schedule starting around June 1 (epoch 369,017), gradually increasing the gas limit 10x over 2 years—then one final 10x to complete the 100x increase. If adopted, Ethereum’s TPS (transactions per second) could jump to nearly 2,000 TPS—a massive hike from the current ~20 TPS.

Ethereum devs previously proposed EIP-9678, a 4x gas limit increase as a core feature for the Fusaka hard fork, scaling L1 execution without new features but exposing client bugs.  

Feist presents the roadmap to a 100x gas limit increase for Ethereum 

deterministic gas limit growth schedule to increase 100x over 4 years

hell yea https://t.co/hwjpZ1bLty

— Jon Charbonneau 🇺🇸 (@jon_charb) April 27, 2025

According to Feist, the current gas limit mechanism relies on uncoordinated and unpredictable miner/operator voting, but the proposed deterministic gas limit growth schedule will increase the gas limit every beacon chain epoch—aligned to a factor-of-10 increase every ~164,250 epochs (approximately 2 years). Ethereum clients will vote to increase the gas limit according to an exponential schedule unless explicitly configured otherwise by the user. The exponential gas limit schedule will stop after 4 years when an updated gas increase schedule should reportedly be decided and committed to.

Feist suggests introducing a deterministic gas limit growth schedule starting around June 1 (epoch 369,017). He claimed that EIP-9698 would encourage a sustainable and transparent gas limit trajectory by introducing a predictable exponential growth pattern as a client default. Feist added that this aligned with the improvements expected in hardware and protocol efficiency. 

The EF researcher also explained that the default gas limit vote was recalculated at the start of each new beacon chain epoch. He added that clients automatically voted for the calculated gas limit using the existing gas voting mechanism. Feist, however, mentioned that users could override this default by setting a manual gas limit policy in client configuration.

“This EIP maintains Ethereum’s current gas voting mechanism but enhances it with a predictable and community-coordinated trajectory…The exponential growth model ensures gradual but significant increases, allowing the network to adapt while targeting ambitious throughput goals.”

~ Dankrad Feist, Researcher at the Ethereum Foundation 

Feist, however, warned that a rapid increase in the gas limit may stress less-optimized nodes and increase block propagation times. He pointed out that the exponential schedule with very gradual increments per epoch would give node operators and developers ample time to adapt and optimize.

Buterin suggests a 10x gas limit increase to support L2 growth 

The co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin on February 14th suggested a 10x increase in Ethereum gas limit to support L2 growth and censorship resistance. Buterin argued that increasing Ethereum’s L1 gas capacity was necessary to support transaction inclusion and application development when most activity occurred on L2. He showed calculations suggesting that a 10x increase in L1 capacity would preserve key network functions as applications migrated to L2 solutions.

Buterin’s analysis built on the recent increase in the L1 gas limit from 30 million to 36 million, which raised capacity by roughly 20%. He noted that further gas limit increases enabled by efficiency improvements in Ethereum clients could reduce history storage from EIP-4444. Buterin also pointed out that the eventual adoption of stateless clients could offer long-term benefits. 

Buterin also claimed that censorship resistance remained an important function. He demonstrated that bypass transactions—designed to overcome potential censorship on L2—could cost approximately $4.50, but these costs could be driven down by scaling L1 capacity by roughly 4.5x, ensuring that valid transactions reached the blockchain promptly, even under congestion.

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