On February 3, 2025, Ethereum increased its gas limit to 31 million units for the first time since the Merge upgrade, enhancing transaction throughput.
Increase in Gas Limit
Raising the gas limit to 31 million units has improved Ethereum's transaction capacity, allowing more transactions per block. This change was achieved via validator consensus, with over 50% signaling support, removing the need for a hard fork.
The Role of Gas in Ethereum Ecosystem
Gas is a main component of the Ethereum ecosystem, serving as a unit to measure the computational effort required for transactions and smart contract executions. The gas limit sets the maximum amount of gas all transactions can use in a single block. By increasing its limit to 31 million, Ethereum is enhancing scalability for higher transaction volumes.
Community Reaction and Future Plans
Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, acknowledged this development, stating, 'L1 is scaling. A big shoutout to all the developers working on EIP-4444, statelessness, client efficiency upgrades, and other features that will make higher L1 gas limits decentralization-friendly.'
Developments like the gas limit increase, Dencun upgrade, and proto-dank sharding expand Ethereum's scalability and transaction efficiency, meeting the growing user demand.
