Ethereum Proposes 100x Gas Limit Increase by 2029

Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist has proposed a significant change to the Ethereum network's gas limit. On Sunday, Feist filed the Ethereum Improvement Proposal 9698, which outlines a plan to allow the blockchain’s gas limit to grow automatically over the next four years. This proposal aims to address the current limitations in the gas limit mechanism, which relies on miner/operator voting and lacks coordination and predictability.

Feist is well-known in the cryptocurrency community for his work on scaling the Ethereum network, particularly his contributions to the "danksharding" element of the network’s Dencun update. The new proposal introduces a deterministic "exponential" schedule that is baked into client defaults. This schedule would increment the gas limit by a small, preset amount every epoch, allowing current validators to keep their machines up to date without the need for sudden upgrades.

If approved and implemented, the gas limit ceiling would increase from 36 million units to approximately 3.6 billion units. This substantial increase is expected to allow for an estimated 6,000 simple transfers per block and over 2,000 transactions per second (TPS). Client teams would still need to ship the code and leave the setting on by default, while operators could override it manually if necessary.

The proposal sets an activation point at Beacon-chain epoch 369017, which is roughly June 1. An epoch lasts 6.4 minutes and consists of 32 slots, each containing a block that stores data and adds to the chain. EIP-9698 is now awaiting review by client maintainers and core developers. If approved, Ethereum’s throughput curve could look very different by 2029, without the need for a hard fork.

This proposal comes at a time when Ethereum is facing increased competition from other blockchains that offer faster settlement times and significantly lower fees. The exodus of financial activity and users to other networks in recent years has highlighted the need for Ethereum to enhance its scalability and efficiency. By introducing a predictable exponential growth pattern for the gas limit, Feist's proposal aims to encourage a sustainable and transparent trajectory for the network, aligned with expected advancements in hardware and protocol efficiency.