Ethereum to ramp up gas limit as Pectra progresses
The post Ethereum to ramp up gas limit as Pectra progresses appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. Ethereum All-Core Devs (ACD) held their final call of 2024 yesterday, which offered key updates on plans to raise the gas limit and progress toward the Pectra upgrade. Discussions revealed the community’s ongoing efforts to balance execution-layer changes, consensus-layer coordination and EIP implementation, reflecting Ethereum’s commitment to “build-in-public” iterative improvement. In a bold but measured move, Ethereum developers are preparing for a gas limit increase, mirroring a 20% rise seen over three years ago. This time, the proposed increase aims for 36 million gas, though significant technical constraints temper enthusiasm for higher thresholds. The primary limitation is the consensus layer’s “GOSSIP_MAX_SIZE,” which restricts validator block transmission to 10 MiB, equivalent to roughly 10.48 MB. On the Mekong testnet — used for Pectra fork testing — the gas limit has already increased to 36 million, offering a stable testing ground for network performance under higher limits. While the Mekong testnet runs stably with these changes, developers cautioned against increasing the mainnet gas limit beyond 40 million without addressing the gossip-layer constraints. Validator clients, such as Prysm, face challenges in dynamically adjusting gas limits, which underlines the need for further development. An increase to the gas limit does not need to wait for a hard fork but can be signaled by validators in support of such a change. To date, only 16.8% have done so, but the trend is up. Campaigns like PumpTheGas.org aim to build more momentum. The Pectra upgrade remains a centerpiece of Ethereum’s 2025 roadmap. It’s on track for a Q1 release, with developers targeting a Devnet-5 launch by year-end. Changes discussed on the call include replacing EIP-7742 with EIP-7840 to offer more flexibility in managing “blob counts” — a key element for scaling Ethereum and…
