Ethereum News Today: Ethereum Gas Limit Surges 3% Boosting Throughput to 18 Transactions Per Second

Ethereum's throughput increased on Sunday as more validators expressed support for raising the network's gas limit to 45 million units. This adjustment aims to lower transaction fees and enhance network scalability. According to Etherscan, the gas limit surged to over 37.3 million units, marking a nearly 3% increase from the previous week. Several blocks were proposed with even higher gas limits, representing the first significant climb since February when the limit was raised from 30 million to 36 million.

Higher gas limits translate to increased transaction throughput on Ethereum’s layer-1 network. Validators can automatically adjust the limit by about 0.1% per block when they signal support for changes. Over the weekend, Ethereum's throughput reached just below 18 transactions per second, according to Chainspect. This is an improvement from the last gas limit increase when the transactions per second (TPS) were around 15.

The recent gas limit increase coincided with nearly half of all staked Ether (ETH) signaling support to raise the gas limit to 45 million or higher through a grassroots “pump the gas” campaign. Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, observed that almost exactly 50% of staked validators are voting to increase the L1 gas limit to 45 million. Currently, 47.2% of staked validators are in favor of higher gas limits, according to GasLimits.pics.

The gas limit refers to the maximum amount of gas spent on executing transactions or smart contracts in each block. Gas is the Ether fee required to conduct a transaction or execute a smart contract on the network. Ethereum developers launched the “pump the gas” campaign in March 2024 to initially raise the Ethereum gas limit from 30 million to 40 million, claiming that this would reduce transaction fees on layer 1. Buterin noted that recent improvements by the Geth team, the most popular Ethereum node client, make these scale increases safer with new archive node optimizations.

Ethereum network activity has also increased in recent months, with daily transactions rising from around 1.1 million in April to current levels around 1.4 million. This uptick in network activity has correlated with an increase in price, with the asset gaining 54% over the past month. Ether topped $3,800 briefly in a seven-month high on Sunday as corporate treasuries and exchange-traded funds continue to load up.