10% of Ethereum validators signal gas limit increase

The percentage of Ethereum validators signaling support for raising the network’s gas limit rose to 10% as the community rallied to increase the maximum amount of gas allowed to be spent for transactions to be included in a single Ethereum block. 

On Dec. 19, the number of validators signaling a gas limit greater than 30 million increased to 10% of the network. Before December, the percentage of validators signaling an increase in gas limit was a little over 1%. 

Ethereum gas limit signaling tracker. Source: gaslimit.pics

The increase follows efforts by Ethereum community members to advocate for raising the gas limit to 36 million.

Increasing the gas limits could result in lower transaction fees

On March 20, core Ethereum developer Eric Connor and former head of smart contracts at MakerDAO Mariano Conti launched a website called “Pump The Gas” to convince the community to raise the Ethereum gas limit to 40 million.

Their website, designed to rally support for a gas limit increase to 40 million, argues that such an adjustment could lower layer-1 transaction fees by 15% to 33%. Connor called on solo stakers, client teams, pools and community members to help with the initiative. 

In December, the efforts intensified, with Ethereum researchers joining in. On Dec. 9, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake said he configured his validator for a 36 million gas limit, saying that a 20% bump “safely greases the wheels.” 

Meanwhile, Emmanuel Awosika, creative director at 2077 Collective, highlighted the benefits for developers, noting that the current gas limit can hinder the deployment of high-demand applications. Awosika told Cointelegraph that raising the gas limits is a way for the network to show that it’s giving ambitious devs something to work with. 

Awosika said that specific applications cannot be deployed with its current gas limit because gas prices will spike once the applications go viral, leading to a “very degraded user experience.” 

Related: Justin Drake proposes ‘Beam Chain’ to replace Ethereum Beacon Chain

Risk of increasing gas limits too much

While community members move toward pumping gas limits on Ethereum, there are also those warning community members to exercise caution when increasing gas limits. Ethereum Foundation’s Toni Wahrstätter said that this could pose serious risks to stability and security. 

The “Pump The Gas” site also acknowledged these risks and said that the core goal of Ethereum is to remain decentralized: 

“If the gas limit is raised too high we could create a scenario where the chain becomes too large for solo node operators to validate and download. Technology improves however and it does make sense to slowly increase it as time goes on.”

It said that raising the gas limits too fast could lead to “unexpected externalities” beyond storage and bandwidth. 

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