Ethereum researcher proposes 100-fold 'exponential' gas limit boost to improve mainnet scaling

Ethereum researcher Dankrad Feist has proposed a gradual hundredfold increase in Ethereum’s gas limit in an Ethereum Improvement Proposal ( EIP-9698 ) published on Sunday.

Under this proposal, Ethereum clients would vote to increase the gas limit according to an exponential schedule. The proposal introduces a “deterministic gas limit growth schedule” with tenfold increases every two years (164,250 epochs), starting in June 2025.

If the proposal goes as suggested by Feist, it could result in a 100-fold increase over four years — raising the gas limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion and making the Ethereum base network comparatively much more performant. “By introducing a predictable exponential growth pattern as a client default, this EIP encourages a sustainable and transparent gas limit trajectory, aligned with expected advancements in hardware and protocol efficiency,” Feist wrote. 

This change would theoretically allow Ethereum to process up to 2,000 transactions per second, Ethereum ecosystem developer Fabrice Cheng noted on X.

Feist acknowledged potential challenges, such as stress on less-optimized nodes and increased block propagation times, but argued that the gradual increments would give node operators and developers time to adapt and optimize.

The proposal comes as Ethereum researchers — Sophia Gold, Toni Wahrstätter, Carl Beek, Alex Stokes, and Feist himself — recently suggested raising Ethereum’s gas limit to 150 million by the Fusaka hard fork later this year in a separate proposal, codenamed EIP-7935 .

Currently, the Ethereum gas limit is 36 million , up from 30 million earlier this year. In 2015, when Ethereum was launched, the gas limit was around 5,000 gas per block. By 2021, it had risen to about 15 million gas, and after "The Merge" in 2022, it stabilized around 30 million gas.

What is Ethereum’s gas limit?

The gas limit on Ethereum is a cap on the total computational effort (measured in gas units) that can be included in a single block. Gas is a unit that measures the computational resources required to execute transactions or smart contracts on the Ethereum network.

Each operation, like sending ETH or interacting with a smart contract, consumes a specific amount of gas, and users pay for this gas with ETH based on the current gas price. Increasing the gas limit allows more computational work, such as more transactions or more complex smart contract executions, to be included in each block.

Ethereum has previously faced criticism for its scalability challenges and its reliance on a Layer 2-focused roadmap. The base layer (Layer 1) processes around 15–30 transactions per second with a gas limit of 36 million per block. While Ethereum is considered more decentralized than other Layer 1 chains, its throughput is much lower than competitors like Solana (65,000 TPS) or newer blockchains like Aptos and Sui.

Still, it’s worth noting that Ethereum’s gas fees have remained around 1–2 gwei for several months now, suggesting that demand for blockspace has decreased due to factors such as the implementation of proto-danksharding (EIP-4844) and a shift of much activity to Layer 2s.

Ethereum’s roadmap, as articulated by its co-founder Vitalik Buterin, focuses on “rollup-centric scaling,” where Layer 2 solutions like Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, and ZK Rollups handle most of the transaction throughput. In contrast, the base layer, or mainnet, focuses on security and data availability.

Critics argue that this approach outsources scalability to Layer 2s, which introduces complexity, fragmentation, and potential risks of centralization. For example, many Layer 2 rollups rely on centralized sequencers. By boosting Layer 1 capacity, Ethereum could better compete with blockchains that offer high transactional capabilities natively.