A brief discussion on the debate over Ethereum Gas limits: What are the advantages and disadvantages of increasing the upper limit on block, validator and MEV income?

Author: Seongwan Park

Compiled by: Glendon, Techub News

The Ethereum community has recently focused on a hot topic: increasing the gas limit. The idea of ​​increasing the gas limit seems reasonable because it is in line with user demand for higher transaction throughput and also reflects the natural growth trend of network capacity over time. This is strongly supported by many researchers and community members, who believe that Ethereum is well prepared for this change and see it as a timely move that directly enhances Ethereum’s scalability.

The proposal has also attracted widespread attention within the community, with websites such as pumpthegas.org created by the community aiming to popularize the basics of Gas cap increases and how validators can change their node settings. Another website, Gaslimit.pics, actively tracks the progress of validators' support for higher Gas limits - data shows that as of December 21, 2024, 25% of Ethereum validators have adjusted their client configuration to show support. . Once more than 50% of validators agree to increase the Gas limit and modify their client configuration, Ethereum's Gas limit will begin to increase and eventually stabilize at the new target value.

It is worth noting that this proposal differs from Ethereum's rollup-centric roadmap, that is, unlike recent scalability improvements (such as EIP-4844 and EIP-7691), which focus on rollup scaling and blob transactions , and increasing the Gas upper limit is an L1 level expansion method (Techub News Note, the Ethereum block Gas limit refers to the upper limit of the number of operations that can be included in a block. This upper limit is determined by Gas value).

While the discussion excited some members of the community, it also raised concerns among researchers about potential risks to Ethereum’s core values ​​such as decentralization and security. Critics warn that in a worst-case scenario, larger block sizes could put pressure on the consensus layer and increase validator hardware requirements, potentially threatening network stability.

Are these worries unfounded? This article explores the brief history of the proposal to increase the gas cap on Ethereum, the potential impact, as well as the technology and some considerations involved in the ongoing discussion.

A brief history of the proposal to increase the gas limit of Ethereum

In fact, the idea of ​​increasing the gas cap on Ethereum has been discussed for some time. At the Ethereum AMA in January 2024, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested raising the Gas limit to 40 million (currently, Ethereum’s Gas limit is 30 million), which is consistent with Moore’s Law and reflects the growth of hardware capabilities. Steady improvement.

It is worth mentioning that Ethereum has not adjusted its Gas cap since April 2021, despite significant hardware improvements during this period. As a result, many community members now believe that it is time for Ethereum to consider these developments.

Just recently, a proposal put forward an "ambitious" goal: doubling the gas limit to 60 million. Of course, 60 million is seen primarily as a long-term goal rather than an immediate one. In December 2024, Toni Wahrstätter suggested a more cautious approach, advocating increasing the Gas limit to 36 million (a 20% increase) as a safer first step.

Therefore, the current increase in the Ethereum Gas cap to 36 million is seen as an initial milestone, and any further increases will follow a gradual, phased approach.

How to adjust the block gas upper limit?

The block gas cap can be increased incrementally without the need for forks or changes to network rules. Instead, validators achieve backward compatibility by modifying their configuration options and make regular, flexible adjustments based on community consensus.

Contrary to popular belief, Ethereum’s block gas limit is not fixed at 30 million. Block proposers can fine-tune it within certain limits. Specifically, the Gas limit of a block can be changed within 1/1024 of the Gas limit of the previous block. For example, if the current block's Gas limit is 30 million, then in the next block, it can be increased to "30,000,000 + 30,000,000 × (1 / 1024) = 30,029,296".

The code below shows the default behavior of Ethereum nodes in the geth client: if the gas limit of a new block is within an acceptable range relative to its parent block (Parent Block), it is considered valid.

The Gas limit can continue to increase if the proposers of consecutive blocks agree to increase the limit. For example, under ideal circumstances (assuming validators reach consensus), reaching the first milestone of 36 million (a 20% increase) would require approximately "log(1.2) / log(1025/1024) = 187 blocks", which is 38 minute. Once more than 50% of validators agree, increases can be implemented quickly.

What impact will raising the gas limit have?

Let's first look at some of the relatively predictable effects of increasing the gas limit. The increase in block capacity will make it easier to handle current blockchain demands, thus reducing gas fees.

In the short term, according to the EIP-1559 mechanism, the reduction in gas fees may lead to a reduction in the amount of ETH burned, temporarily increasing the net issuance of Ethereum. A similar trend occurred after EIP-4844, when data availability (DA) fees for rollups were significantly reduced, resulting in less ETH being burned. An increase in the gas cap could have the same effect, further exacerbating short-term inflation.

However, lower fees may encourage more network activity in the long term as more users can afford transaction fees. This increased activity will likely drive Ethereum’s network effects, attracting more DApps and promoting wider adoption. As Ethereum becomes an integral part of DApps and DeFi systems, the frequency of use of ETH as a currency is likely to increase. The resulting increase in ETH usage may in turn drive further growth in network activity, creating a positive feedback loop for the Ethereum ecosystem.

After the gas limit is increased, it will be possible to build new DApps

In addition to lowering gas and improving transaction flow, increasing the gas limit for a single block may unlock entirely new opportunities. While a modest increase to 36 million won’t necessarily bring significant changes, a larger jump to 60 million could enable new types of DApps and transactions that were previously restricted by the 30 million Gas cap. Because some operations that nearly fill or exceed the current 30 million Gas limit may be performed more efficiently or become feasible for the first time after the change.

For example, transactions that require large amounts of Gas (NFT batch minting, large-scale token airdrops, or DAO activities) often approach or exceed the current 30 million Gas limit. These transactions are often spread across multiple blocks, leading to inefficiencies, transaction delays, and potential vulnerabilities. One specific example shown in the image below is an NFT batch minting transaction, which consumed over 28 million Gas.

Transaction hash: 0xf99bdd89f7e3186e63d71a4a3ffb53cb5cd1c3190ce3771c966f2a82b3346bee

By increasing the block gas limit to 60 million, such operations can be completed within a single block, ensuring atomic execution. This guarantees that the entire operation either succeeds or fails, avoiding partial completions and ensuring fairness for participants while reducing the chance of manipulation.

In addition to optimizing existing use cases, higher gas caps may also pave the way for innovative DApps that require computationally intensive operations. For example, as the gas limit increases, on-chain AI applications such as small-scale model training or inference may become feasible. Likewise, more complex smart contracts, such as fully on-chain games or complex governance mechanisms, can thrive in higher volume environments. These advancements are likely to expand Ethereum’s functionality and appeal, making the ecosystem more diverse.

So in many cases doubling the gas cap may be more beneficial as it reduces fragmentation and unlocks some new possibilities.

What does increasing the gas limit mean for the "impossible triangle"

dilemma of blockchain?

Increasing the gas cap is fundamentally about improving Ethereum’s scalability. In the context of blockchain’s “impossible triangle” dilemma, achieving greater scalability often comes at the expense of decentralization or security. This is why the proposal to increase the gas cap has raised some concerns that it could lead to centralization by increasing validator requirements, or weaken security by reducing the stability of the consensus layer.

However, proponents argue that this is not about sacrificing decentralization or security for the sake of scalability. Instead, they describe it as taking advantage of the hardware performance improvements described by Moore's Law to expand the total capacity of the blockchain. In this view, the “triangle” of blockchain’s “impossible triangle” dilemma may expand as modern hardware allows for greater total capacity without necessarily degrading Ethereum’s core properties.

To assess whether this is true, the potential risks of raising the Gas limit must be carefully examined. Considerations regarding decentralization may include increased validator hardware requirements, as well as the complexity of the MEV strategy. In terms of security, we should consider increasing the worst-case block size and transaction execution time, which will affect the rate of forks or missed slots.

Gas limit increase and block size

An increase in the gas limit in a single block can accommodate more call data, which affects the worst-case block size. Currently, the maximum block size that can be achieved by filling blocks with meaningless call data is about 1.8MB, and with six blobs, the total data size spread in a single slot can reach 2.58MB. A higher gas cap will increase this worst-case block size, potentially causing problems with the peer-to-peer (P2P) layer that network nodes use to communicate.

This situation may put pressure on the consensus client at the P2P layer. When the gas limit exceeds 40 million, the worst-case block size may exceed the limit built into the default client behavior, causing some clients to fail to propose or propagate blocks correctly. Therefore, it is critical to address these limitations before significantly increasing the gas cap.

It is hoped that EIP-7623 will provide a solution by adjusting the calldata price in data availability transactions, which can reduce the worst-case block size from 2.58MB to approximately 1.2MB. Therefore, we believe that the adoption of EIP-7623 will be necessary to ensure that any future increase in the Gas limit maintains consensus stability.

Likewise, the actual block size (the block size typically filled with transaction data) is related to the probability of reorganization or missing slots. Analysis of the slot data (#9526972 to #10351782) shows that for smaller blocks, the difference in block size distribution between included slots and reorganized/missed slots is small. However, as blocks get larger (e.g., over 0.25MB), the likelihood of reorganization or missing slots increases.

This correlation may stem from factors such as increased transaction execution time or default P2P behavior, rather than just block size itself. While the observed relationships highlight potential risks, they do not establish cause and effect.

In summary, although the increase in block size will affect the stability of the slot, the worst-case block size is particularly important to ensure the robustness of the P2P layer. Future increases to the Gas limit must be accompanied by changes such as those proposed in EIP-7623 to effectively mitigate these risks.

Gas limit increase and execution time

Since the increase in the gas limit allows more transactions to be included in the block, the execution time of the transaction will also increase accordingly. Whether this increase is critical depends on forks or missing slots, which represents the stability of the overall consensus.

The graph below shows that as more Gas is used in a block, execution time tends to increase. It is expected that the 20% gas limit increase will slightly extend the execution time, but the specific impact is difficult to predict. Execution time is not always directly proportional to the maximum gas limit or gas usage. However, if we make conservative scaling assumptions based on the graph and assume that they are directly proportional, then an increase of 400 to 500 milliseconds in execution time seems reasonable.

Now, let's explore the relationship between execution time and forked or missed slots.

The red box in the above figure emphasizes that slots with execution times longer than 4000 milliseconds are more likely to be reorganized or missed than slots with shorter execution times. Although most reorganizations or missed slots occur between 1000 and 3000 ms (indicating a weak correlation between execution time and reorganization probability in this range), the blocks in the red box show that when the execution time exceeds At 4000 ms, the probability of recombination is significantly higher. Another chart further emphasizes the impact of very high execution times on stability by showing that slots with execution times longer than 4000 ms have reorganization or miss rates that are more than three times higher than slots with execution times below 4000 ms.

Will the increased gas limit affect validator hardware requirements?

When raising the gas limit, the main concern of validators is the storage size of the validator node running. As of December 2024, a validator node has approximately 1.5 to 1.6TB of storage space for maintaining all historical and status data. The increase in the gas limit will accelerate the growth of history and state data.

In 2020 and 2021, a 2TB solid-state drive (SSD) is required to run a validator node. However, when the historical and state data reaches 1.8TB, validators using a 2TB SSD need to replace it with a 4TB SSD. Although the price of a 4TB SSD today is almost the same as the price of a 2TB SSD three years ago, about $250, the replacement itself means maintenance costs and technical difficulties.

The 36 million Gas cap may not be a big deal. However, if the gas limit increases to 60 million or more, validator nodes will have to continue to replace hardware, thus accumulating maintenance costs and threatening decentralization.

When EIP-4444 is adopted (the goal is to release the client before May 2025), the growth of historical data may stop, providing more room for the gas cap to increase. However, without EIP-4444, the growth of historical data may be the next bottleneck in increasing the Gas limit.

Storm Slivkoff's analysis of state growth shows that state growth is also a potential bottleneck, but that the current growth rate (~2.62 GiB per month) is manageable and modern hardware can support a decade of growth. Memory requirements increase as state size increases, and raising the gas limit to 60 million will speed up this process, potentially requiring an additional 2 to 4.7 GiB of RAM per year. While the current configuration of 64GiB of RAM provides sufficient buffer space, continued growth may make upgrades more frequent.

It is expected that upcoming improvements, such as Verkle trees and state expiration, will ease this burden, but careful monitoring is still important.

What does the increased gas limit mean for MEV?

Another factor that may affect decentralization is the impact of increased gas caps on validator MEV (maximum extractable value) earnings. As MEV becomes increasingly important, concerns arise about the income gap between sophisticated validators using advanced MEV strategies and smaller independent stakers. This income gap may exacerbate centralization pressures, as validators with greater resources and expertise will dominate. To solve this problem, the Ethereum community is actively discussing mechanisms such as Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) and MEV destruction, aiming to balance validator income.

In theory, an increase in the gas cap allows for more transactions to be included in a single block, potentially exacerbating the MEV-related revenue gap. While MEV Boost has partially alleviated this problem, allowing independent stakers to capture a portion of MEV rewards, the data on the validator income gap is still inconclusive. This is due to the challenges of defining MEV transactions and accurately tracking returns, especially in complex scenarios such as complex MEV strategies across centralized exchanges (CEX) and decentralized exchanges (DEX). However, these scenarios are relatively rare, as most MEV comes from block-top strategies.

On the other hand, a higher Gas limit will also make more complex and resource-intensive MEV strategies possible. Although rare, there are MEV bots that perform highly complex transactions that consume almost the entire block's Gas limit. For example, a bot transaction using over 18 million Gas was observed, performing multiple swap and liquidity operations within a block. As gas caps increase, such strategies may become more common, potentially widening the gap between established validators and smaller players.

in conclusion

The discussion around increasing Ethereum’s gas cap presents an exciting opportunity to drive scalability, lower transaction fees, and create new possibilities for DApps subject to current limitations. However, this issue also triggered deep concerns about decentralization, validator requirements, and network stability. Issues such as state and historical data growth, extended execution times, and MEV differences highlight the need to carefully consider and monitor empirical data.

Ultimately, the key to successfully raising the Gas limit lies in how Ethereum skillfully balances these complex factors. Solutions such as EIP-7623, Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) and MEV Burning have demonstrated the network’s proactive attitude towards addressing potential risks, and with careful planning and execution, higher Gas caps are also expected to unlock Ethereum the next stage of growth.