Why does Ethereum dare to raise the Gas limit to 60 million?

Author: Zhixiong Pan

In the past year, the Gas limit of Ethereum blocks has rapidly increased from approximately 30 million to 60 million. This leap is driven by multiple factors, including control over the worst-case size of blocks at the protocol layer, significant optimizations in the performance of execution clients, and systematic testing and validation for higher Gas limits.

In simple terms, developers have reduced the risk of raising the Gas limit by improving the Ethereum protocol rules, significantly enhancing the speed at which various clients process large blocks, and demonstrating that the network can still produce and propagate blocks on time under higher loads.

These efforts have made it so that the Ethereum mainnet has transitioned from being hesitant to easily raise the Gas limit, to now being able to safely increase the limit all the way to 60M Gas. Below, we will explain the concept and history of Gas Limit in detail, then delve into the core reasons for the increase in Gas Limit, and look ahead at the conditions required for further expansion in the future.

Gas Limit and Blob: Definition and Difference

Gas Limit is a parameter in Ethereum that measures the maximum computational workload per block, which means the total Gas amount that can be included in a block for transaction execution. The higher the Gas Limit, the more transactions a single block can accommodate, leading to greater on-chain throughput. However, the downside is that a higher Gas Limit increases the burden on network participants: block validators need to package and broadcast larger blocks within a fixed block time, and all nodes in the network must also download and execute larger blocks, resulting in increased network bandwidth and pressure on node hardware.

Blob is a different type of block content, a new element introduced to expand Ethereum's data availability. Blobs originate from the EIP-4844 proposal, which allows for the temporary accommodation of a large amount of binary data for Layer 2 use within blocks, with cost measurement independent of regular transaction Gas consumption. Simply put, Blobs provide additional space specifically for L2 Rollup data, while Gas Limit measures the upper limit of conventional EVM computation scale. The two are not directly comparable: increasing the number of Blobs primarily affects the capacity of L2 data that can be attached to a block, while increasing the Gas Limit directly increases the computational capacity for executing transactions on L1.

This article focuses on discussing the topic of Gas Limit, while the changes in Blob capacity will not be elaborated.

Historical Background: Why Wasn't the Gas Limit Increased in the Past?

Ethereum has always been cautious about raising the block Gas limit in its early days. After EIP-1559 was implemented in 2021, Ethereum set the block Gas target at around 15 million (with a maximum of about 30 million per block), and it has not been raised in the following years. The reason is that several key bottlenecks at that time had not been resolved, and recklessly raising the Gas limit could jeopardize network security and decentralization:

• Execution Performance: Can the client software execute more transactions quickly enough? If the block size is too large, causing nodes to be unable to complete execution and verification within the block interval, it may miss timely block production or result in chain forks.
• Network Transmission: Larger blocks need to be broadcasted to the entire network within a 12-second block time, especially needing to be received by the majority of validators within 4 seconds to timely submit proof of stake. Blocks that are too large may experience transmission delays, leading to consensus issues.
• State Growth: Higher throughput will accelerate the inflation of Ethereum's global state (ledger data), increasing the burden of node synchronization and storage, which may weaken the decentralization of the network in the long term.
• Hardware Requirements: The above factors cumulatively mean that the hardware configuration required to run a node has increased. If ordinary users find it difficult to keep up with a home computer, a higher Gas limit may lead to the network concentrating on a few high-performance nodes, which is detrimental to decentralization.

Due to the concerns mentioned above, the Gas limit on the Ethereum mainnet has remained stable for a long time, without easily breaking the level of 30 million. Especially after the rise of Rollups, a large number of transactions compress data and publish it to L1 through low-cost calldata, causing the average size of Ethereum blocks to gradually approach the limit, with extreme cases where a single block of data can even reach several megabytes.

Without other improvements, increasing the Gas limit will only further exacerbate block size and performance issues. Therefore, the Ethereum community chose to mainly rely on Layer 2 scaling at that time, rather than hastily increasing the Gas limit on L1.

The Core Reasons for the Rapid Increase in Gas Limit Today

So, why can Ethereum increase the Gas limit by more than double while maintaining security after entering 2025? The fundamental reason lies in the simultaneous implementation of the following technical improvements, which clear obstacles for scalability.

protocol upgrade limit worst-case block size

Ethereum has introduced new protocol rules to reduce the upper limit of the “worst-case” block size. A key part of this is the EIP-7623 proposal, which significantly reduces the amount of cheap data that can be included in a single block under extreme circumstances by increasing the gas cost of calldata in transactions.

Before the implementation of EIP-7623, attackers could fill a block with data up to several MB using an extremely low calldata gas price; after the price increase, the same amount of data will consume more gas, effectively reducing the block size limit and alleviating the issue of “the difference between the average and extreme values of block size being too large.”

This change ensures that even if the overall Gas Limit is increased, the overall byte size of the block will not expand uncontrollably, thus providing a safety margin for raising the Gas limit. In other words, the protocol layer actively tightens the data layer's expenses, ensuring that “the computation doubles, but the block size does not double,” laying the foundation for later increasing the Gas limit from 30 million to 60 million.

At the same time, the mainnet began to introduce dedicated Blob data transactions for Rollup use in EIP-4844, further reducing Rollup's reliance on cheap calldata. As Rollup data gradually shifts from ordinary Gas space to Blob space, regular block Gas is more concentrated on actual contract computation, making average blocks “lighter,” which indirectly creates more favorable conditions for raising the Gas limit.

Significant optimization of client performance

The various Ethereum execution client teams have conducted in-depth performance benchmarking and optimization of the software, significantly improving the speed of processing large blocks. The Gas benchmarking framework, led by teams like Nethermind, fills the full block with a single type of instruction or precompiled contract to stress test the client’s maximum processing capability (measured in “million Gas per second”).

Through this unified benchmark, developers have identified and fixed some previously hidden execution bottlenecks. For example, it was found during testing that certain extreme cases of “Modular Exponentiation” (ModExp) precompiles took far longer than their Gas pricing, becoming a common bottleneck for all mainstream clients.

In response to these findings, the community quickly proposed EIP-7883 to reprice Gas for the ModExp precompiled contract and coordinated client optimization algorithms. At the same time, other time-consuming cryptographic operations (such as BLS12-381 elliptic curve calculations, BN256, hashing, etc.) were also optimized or repriced by the client teams.

According to statistics, after the mid-2025 cross-client “Berlin Interop” performance sprint, the block processing speed of each execution client has significantly improved in the worst-case scenario, with most operations reaching a level of approximately 20 million Gas processed per second.

Based on the calculation, if the client can execute 20 million Gas per second, then theoretically up to 80M Gas can be processed within a 4-second block interval in PoS. This means that raising the block limit to 60M Gas is still within a safe margin.

These performance improvements eliminate the previous concerns about “execution speed not keeping up with the Gas limit,” ensuring that even if a block contains double the usual transaction volume, the client can complete verification within the stipulated time, without missing the consensus deadline due to slow execution.

comprehensive testing and verification of network transmission limits

Before implementing any mainnet Gas limit increase, developers conducted extensive testing across multiple dedicated networks to ensure that larger blocks can still be propagated in a timely manner and accepted by the vast majority of nodes.

For example, in 2025, Ethereum developers increased the block Gas limit to 60M on the Sepolia testnet and the newly developed Hoodi network while continuously monitoring the network performance metrics. The results showed that even with the maximum 60M Gas blocks, block proposals in these networks were still able to be packaged on time and quickly propagated through the P2P network: 90% of nodes received the block within about 0.7 to 1.0 seconds after the block was generated, and almost all nodes completed validation and accepted the block as the new chain head within 4 seconds.

In other words, even if the gas usage of a block doubles, the block can still propagate across the network before the 4-second submission deadline set by Ethereum. During these stress tests, developers monitored key data such as whether the proposing nodes produced blocks on time and the time distribution required for the entire network to accept the new blocks, and no significant anomalies were found.

Due to the differences in the state scale and node topology between the testnet and the mainnet, developers remain cautiously optimistic. However, test results have proven that a 60M Gas block is feasible both theoretically and in engineering terms. At the same time, to ensure the security of the consensus layer, developers have also considered the limitations at the beacon chain level (for example, the beacon chain network layer currently has a ~10MB single block Gossip propagation limit). By using methods like the aforementioned EIP-7623 to reduce the byte count of individual blocks and avoiding the worst-case scenario of too many penalty transactions occurring simultaneously, the execution load of 60M Gas has not reached these limits.

Overall, the various tests and adjustments have given the core team a solid grasp of the risks involved in increasing the mainnet Gas Limit from 30 million to 60 million, boosting their confidence. After the majority of validators expressed support (approximately 150,000+ validator nodes voted in favor of the increase), Ethereum finally moved to raise the mainnet Gas limit in 2025, planning to officially adjust the default value to 60M in subsequent upgrades.

Future Outlook: What More is Needed for Further Improvement?

The Ethereum community does not intend to stop at 60M Gas. In subsequent upgrade plans such as Fusaka, developers have outlined a path to continue raising the block Gas limit to 100M or even higher. To achieve this goal, there are still several technical challenges that need to be solved or closely monitored:

• Further optimization of heavy computational operations: As mentioned earlier, the ModExp algorithm has basically eliminated bottlenecks through EIP-7883 re-pricing and client optimizations. However, to support 100M level blocks, it may still be necessary to optimize or introduce dedicated acceleration for other high Gas-consuming cryptographic operations (such as elliptic curve signature verification, zero-knowledge proof verification, etc.). Fortunately, the client team has already begun collaboration in these areas, adjusting the implementation of the BN256 elliptic curve-related precompiles during testing in 2025, ensuring that its performance no longer hinders progress. It is foreseeable that as Ethereum introduces more high-performance cryptographic primitives (even considering native support for STARKs, etc.), execution bottlenecks will continue to be broken, clearing obstacles for increasing Gas limits.
• Control of state scale and node costs: A higher Gas limit means that on-chain state may grow faster. If not addressed, the difficulty of full node storage and synchronizing new nodes will significantly increase in a few years. Ethereum developers are already researching state growth issues, such as proposing state rent or periodically trimming historical state to avoid endless expansion. However, these longer-term mechanisms are still under discussion. In the short term, as the Gas limit increases, node operators may need to upgrade their hardware (such as faster SSDs and more memory) more frequently to keep up with the growing state and data volume. The community emphasizes that while increasing the Gas limit, it will not sacrifice decentralization, and therefore will cautiously assess the impact of each expansion step on ordinary nodes until the state management solutions mature.
• Consensus layer improvements and network protocol optimizations: If we are to support blocks of 100M Gas or larger in the future, some consensus and network parameters may need to be adjusted. For example, the current beacon chain blocks have an overall size limit that includes execution payload, Blob data, and proof data. Developers may need to increase the message size limit at the P2P layer or reduce the latency of large blocks through techniques such as compression and sharding propagation. Additionally, Ethereum is introducing PeerDAS (Peer-to-Peer Data Sampling Network) to handle the efficient propagation of Blob data, which will alleviate some of the pressure on execution layer block propagation. After ensuring the safe operation of the execution layer at 60M+ Gas, improvements in the data layer and network layer will become the focus of the next phase of scaling.

Looking to the future, as long as the improvements in the above-mentioned aspects are advanced simultaneously, further increasing the Gas limit of the Ethereum mainnet is not an unattainable goal. Developers have validated the feasibility of raising it from 36M to 45M and 60M on the testnet, and the next step towards 100M is also in planning. It is important to emphasize that the Ethereum community maintains a consistent cautious attitude towards scaling: every increase will be “tested first, then on the mainnet,” and will only be implemented after confirming that it does not jeopardize network security and decentralization.

Overall, the significant increase in Gas Limit over the past year is a result of collaborative innovation across multiple fields: the protocol layer reduces risks, clients enhance performance, and test data provides confidence. Supported by these efforts, Ethereum has successfully taken an important step in L1 scalability, laying the foundation for future capacity increases and accommodating more applications.