Ethereum's Upcoming Gas Limit Increase: Potential for Enhanced Performance

Ethereum's gas limit is set to increase from 60 million to 80 million in January 2024. This decision follows discussions in the All Core Developers meeting, where Christine Kim, vice president of the research team at Galaxy Digital, summarized the plans shared by Nethermind representatives.

The gas limit increase is contingent on the upcoming BPO hard fork scheduled for January 7. Barnabas Busa, an Ethereum Foundation developer operations engineer, indicated that two client-level optimizations are necessary before proceeding: partial blob responses on the execution layer and the max blobs flag on the consensus layer.

Raising the gas limit will allow more transactions and smart contract operations per block, potentially improving throughput and lowering fees. While the increase will not match the speed or cost-effectiveness of layer ones like Solana or Sui, it will enhance Ethereum's positioning as a secure settlement and execution layer without compromising decentralization.

The Ethereum All Core Developers will meet again on January 5 to finalize the gas limit increase plans. This gas limit adjustment follows previous increases this year: from 30 million to 35 million in February, from 35 million to 45 million in July, and from 45 million to 60 million in November.

The Ethereum developer community aims to reach a gas limit of 180 million by the end of 2026. According to Cointelegraph, the planned increase is significant for users and developers relying on Ethereum for decentralized applications and transactions.