Increasing the Gas Limit does not mean that PoS Nodes can earn more money; in fact, it is highly likely that they will earn less.
Written by: Ebunker
In the past, many people still had the impression that ETH's TPS (transactions per second) was "15 transactions per second." However, with ongoing protocol optimizations, Ethereum's current TPS peak has increased to approximately 60, which is a fourfold increase.
Although this change is related to continuous optimization over the years, the most direct reason can be attributed to the simple and effective adjustment of the GAS Limit from the previous cap of 15 million to a new cap of 36 million.
Recently, ETH is about to raise the GAS Limit again to a maximum of 60 million.
What is GAS Limit?
Each of us needs to pay Gas as transaction fees when using ETH. Gas Limit, as the name suggests, is the upper limit of Gas that each block can accommodate. The higher this limit, the more transactions the block can process, and the faster the network speed will increase.
Among the many scaling paths, increasing the Gas Limit can be said to be the most immediate way.
More importantly, this adjustment does not require a hard fork, as the Gas Limit is a dynamic parameter in Ethereum, and PoS nodes can fine-tune it under the existing protocol rules.
In other words, the protocol itself allows each new block producer to adjust the Gas Limit within a range of ±1/1024 compared to the parent block, which is inherently part of the consensus mechanism. This is also in stark contrast to Bitcoin's mechanism of fixing the block size at 1MB.
Therefore, increasing the Gas Limit does not require system upgrades or code modifications; as long as the PoS Node continuously "signals" support during block production, it can promote the network to gradually adopt this change. Currently, there are over 1 million validators across the Ethereum network, and once a certain level of support is reached, the network will automatically transition to the new Gas limit while ensuring compatibility for all nodes.
As of now, approximately 15% of validators have chosen to support the setting of 60 million Gas. Ebunker has also participated in the support, and as an unmanaged Node service provider, we always focus on the balance between Ethereum network performance and decentralization. Since this is a voluntary process, there is still a considerable number of Nodes that maintain the configuration of the old version (for example 30 million).
Increasing the Gas Limit does not mean that PoS Nodes can earn more money; in fact, it is highly likely that they earn less.
Since the launch of EIP-1559, the Base Fee of Ethereum has been burned directly, and validators can only earn the tips that users actively add. Once the Gas Limit is increased, it means that the overall processing capacity of the network is enhanced, transaction congestion decreases, and the pressure to compete for tips also weakens, resulting in a natural decline in tip amounts. Therefore, to some extent, an increase in Gas Limit actually reduces the income of validators, while the amount of ETH burned further increases.
Therefore, under such an incentive mechanism, choosing to support validators with a Gas Limit of 60 million can be said to be selfless.
In addition, the community recently proposed a controversial proposal — EIP-9698. This proposal suggests increasing the Gas Limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion over the next four years, aiming to raise Ethereum's TPS to around 2000, directly targeting the current high-performance chain Solana. However, this idea is clearly somewhat radical.
Theoretically, as long as the hardware performance of the node is strong enough, the gas limit can indeed be continuously raised. But the reality is that with over 1 million active validators, the Ethereum network needs to juggle a wide range of participants. However, the number of validators of some other high-performance public chains is only at the scale of 100, and the gap between the two is as high as 10,000 times.
Even the proposal to raise the Gas Limit from 36 million to 60 million could only enter the network adjustment rhythm after the Pectra upgrade brought execution load optimization.
According to research by ethpandaops, after the Gas Limit was increased to 60 million, about 90% of blocks can be discovered for the first time within 1016 milliseconds. Compared to before, the block propagation delay has slightly increased, but still remains within an acceptable range.
However, 66% of the nodes in the Ethereum network need to fully receive the block and its accompanying blob data within 4 seconds for the block to be considered valid. Based on this propagation limitation, the theoretical upper limit of Gas Limit estimated by the testnet is approximately 150 million. Therefore, under the current architecture, the vision of EIP-9698 is difficult to realize in the short term.
Of course, if Ethereum implements a "large node / small node" architecture in the future, for example, allowing nodes that stake 2048 ETH to handle higher loads, while 32 ETH nodes handle smaller blocks, it may open up new space for further expansion.
So, although everyone often jokes that the ETH Gas Price is hitting new lows and the "noble chain" no longer exists, this may not only be due to market changes, but rather Ethereum itself is indeed becoming faster, more efficient, and more accessible.
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Ethereum has raised the Gas Limit to 60 million, and the path for expansion is becoming clearer.
Written by: Ebunker
In the past, many people still had the impression that ETH's TPS (transactions per second) was "15 transactions per second." However, with ongoing protocol optimizations, Ethereum's current TPS peak has increased to approximately 60, which is a fourfold increase.
Although this change is related to continuous optimization over the years, the most direct reason can be attributed to the simple and effective adjustment of the GAS Limit from the previous cap of 15 million to a new cap of 36 million.
Recently, ETH is about to raise the GAS Limit again to a maximum of 60 million.
What is GAS Limit?
Each of us needs to pay Gas as transaction fees when using ETH. Gas Limit, as the name suggests, is the upper limit of Gas that each block can accommodate. The higher this limit, the more transactions the block can process, and the faster the network speed will increase.
Among the many scaling paths, increasing the Gas Limit can be said to be the most immediate way.
More importantly, this adjustment does not require a hard fork, as the Gas Limit is a dynamic parameter in Ethereum, and PoS nodes can fine-tune it under the existing protocol rules.
In other words, the protocol itself allows each new block producer to adjust the Gas Limit within a range of ±1/1024 compared to the parent block, which is inherently part of the consensus mechanism. This is also in stark contrast to Bitcoin's mechanism of fixing the block size at 1MB.
Therefore, increasing the Gas Limit does not require system upgrades or code modifications; as long as the PoS Node continuously "signals" support during block production, it can promote the network to gradually adopt this change. Currently, there are over 1 million validators across the Ethereum network, and once a certain level of support is reached, the network will automatically transition to the new Gas limit while ensuring compatibility for all nodes.
As of now, approximately 15% of validators have chosen to support the setting of 60 million Gas. Ebunker has also participated in the support, and as an unmanaged Node service provider, we always focus on the balance between Ethereum network performance and decentralization. Since this is a voluntary process, there is still a considerable number of Nodes that maintain the configuration of the old version (for example 30 million).
Increasing the Gas Limit does not mean that PoS Nodes can earn more money; in fact, it is highly likely that they earn less.
Since the launch of EIP-1559, the Base Fee of Ethereum has been burned directly, and validators can only earn the tips that users actively add. Once the Gas Limit is increased, it means that the overall processing capacity of the network is enhanced, transaction congestion decreases, and the pressure to compete for tips also weakens, resulting in a natural decline in tip amounts. Therefore, to some extent, an increase in Gas Limit actually reduces the income of validators, while the amount of ETH burned further increases.
Therefore, under such an incentive mechanism, choosing to support validators with a Gas Limit of 60 million can be said to be selfless.
In addition, the community recently proposed a controversial proposal — EIP-9698. This proposal suggests increasing the Gas Limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion over the next four years, aiming to raise Ethereum's TPS to around 2000, directly targeting the current high-performance chain Solana. However, this idea is clearly somewhat radical.
Theoretically, as long as the hardware performance of the node is strong enough, the gas limit can indeed be continuously raised. But the reality is that with over 1 million active validators, the Ethereum network needs to juggle a wide range of participants. However, the number of validators of some other high-performance public chains is only at the scale of 100, and the gap between the two is as high as 10,000 times.
Even the proposal to raise the Gas Limit from 36 million to 60 million could only enter the network adjustment rhythm after the Pectra upgrade brought execution load optimization.
According to research by ethpandaops, after the Gas Limit was increased to 60 million, about 90% of blocks can be discovered for the first time within 1016 milliseconds. Compared to before, the block propagation delay has slightly increased, but still remains within an acceptable range.
However, 66% of the nodes in the Ethereum network need to fully receive the block and its accompanying blob data within 4 seconds for the block to be considered valid. Based on this propagation limitation, the theoretical upper limit of Gas Limit estimated by the testnet is approximately 150 million. Therefore, under the current architecture, the vision of EIP-9698 is difficult to realize in the short term.
Of course, if Ethereum implements a "large node / small node" architecture in the future, for example, allowing nodes that stake 2048 ETH to handle higher loads, while 32 ETH nodes handle smaller blocks, it may open up new space for further expansion.
So, although everyone often jokes that the ETH Gas Price is hitting new lows and the "noble chain" no longer exists, this may not only be due to market changes, but rather Ethereum itself is indeed becoming faster, more efficient, and more accessible.