Ethereum raises Gas Limit to 60 million, significantly improving network performance

The performance of the Ethereum network continues to improve, with TPS (transactions per second) increasing from the original "15 transactions per second" to approximately 60, a fourfold growth. This significant advancement is mainly attributed to raising the Gas Limit from 15 million to 36 million.

Currently, Ethereum is preparing to further increase the Gas Limit to 60 million. The Gas Limit is the upper limit of Gas that can be accommodated in each block, and raising this limit can directly increase the block's capacity to process transactions, thereby improving network speed.

It is worth noting that adjusting the Gas Limit does not require a hard fork. The Gas Limit of Ethereum is a dynamic parameter that PoS nodes can fine-tune under the existing protocol rules. The protocol allows each new block producer to adjust the Gas Limit within a range of ±1/1024 relative to the parent block, which is part of the consensus mechanism.

Currently, about 15% of validators have chosen to support the setting of 60 million Gas. This is a voluntary process, so a considerable number of nodes still maintain the configuration of the old version (such as 30 million).

Increasing the Gas Limit does not mean that PoS nodes can earn more profits. In fact, due to the implementation of EIP-1559, the Base Fee is directly burned, and validators can only earn the small tips that users actively add. After the Gas Limit is increased, the network's processing capacity is enhanced, transaction congestion is reduced, and the amount of tips may decrease. Therefore, validators who support raising the Gas Limit are indeed acting for the benefit of the network rather than personal gain.

The community recently proposed the EIP-9698 proposal, suggesting to increase the Gas Limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion over the next four years, aiming to raise Ethereum's TPS to about 2000. However, this proposal is too aggressive and difficult to achieve in the short term. The Ethereum network has over 1 million active validators and needs to take into account a wide range of participants.

According to research, when the Gas Limit is increased to 60 million, approximately 90% of blocks can be discovered for the first time within 1016 milliseconds. Although there is a slight increase in block propagation delay, it remains within an acceptable range. However, considering that 66% of nodes need to completely receive the blocks and their accompanying blob data within 4 seconds, the theoretical upper limit of the Gas Limit under the current architecture is about 150 million.

In the future, if Ethereum implements a "large node/small node" architecture that allows nodes staking more ETH to handle higher loads, it may create conditions for further scaling.

Overall, the Ethereum network is becoming faster, more efficient, and more user-friendly. The continuous decline in Gas Price not only reflects market changes but also demonstrates the performance improvements of Ethereum itself.