The majority of validators on the Etherium network have voted in favour of increasing the gas limit. What does this mean for the altcoin?
More than half of the validators on the Etherium network have already backed a proposal to raise the limit of gas that can be used to add transactions in a single block. The outcome in the decentralised vote follows a long debate about the feasibility of such a decision. A notable number of network members are against raising the gas limit, as this upgrade could allegedly lead to destabilisation. Although it has already been publicly recognised by Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Etherium.
Actual gas limit in Efirium
According to gaslimit.pics, as of today, February 4, 52 percent of active validators on the network voted for the gas limit increase. Thus, the threshold of 50 per cent required for the upgrade has been exceeded.
Thanks to this, developers will be able to integrate the innovation without the need for a hardfork, i.e. updating the chain by splitting it into a new one.
Efirium validator voting results
As the chart from Ycharts shows, the average gas limit per Efirium block has hovered around 30 million units since August 2021. Before that, it was increased from 15 million units.
Graph of the gas limit per Efirium block
Transactions conducted on the network as of today were done with an average gas limit of 33 million units per block.
Gas in Efirium is a unit of measurement of the network's computing resources required to execute transactions and smart contracts. The gas limit, on the other hand, represents the maximum amount of gas a user is willing to spend on a transaction. The cost of a transaction is determined by multiplying the gas limit by the price of gas expressed in gwei, which is the minimum cryptocurrency unit equal to 0.000000001 ETH.
What’s going to happen to Efirium?
Digital assets user Evan Van Ness explained the relatively long decision process. Here is his comment on the matter.
This will be the first increase in the Proof-of-Stake gas limit. Since PoS is much more decentralised than legacy technologies like PoW, it took longer to coordinate.
As a reminder, the original Etherium network ran on the Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm. Thus its security was guaranteed by miners, who added new blocks to the chain and were responsible for the correctness of what was happening in the blockchain.
In September 2022, Eth developers moved the blockchain to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), with validators replacing the miners. They block 32 ether in a special contract and participate in the block creation process.
Etherium creator Vitalik Buterin
Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Etherium, mentioned in his Twitter the fact of the validators’ voting results. At the same time, he stated the need for an upgrade of Pectra, which will be carried out in March. As part of this upgrade, it is expected to increase the so-called blob target from 3 to 6 units, which will increase the scalability of Tier 2 solutions based on Efirium. Vitalik proposed that this issue be resolved by a similar vote.
Blobs are large packets of data that can be included in blocks of the Etherium network. The novelty was introduced as part of the EIP-4844 or Danksharding update. Unlike traditional transactions, blobs do not take up space on the blockchain forever and are stored by nodes for only 18 days.
The issue of increasing the gas limit has divided the Etherium community into two camps. Some supported the decision, citing the expansion of the network’s capacity.
According to Cointelegraph’s sources, developer Justin Drake said on Twitter that he would adjust his node to the new limit mainly because of the method of safe innovation. After all, the limit around 30 million units has remained relevant for 3.5 years.
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That said, back in March 2024, developer Eric Connor and former head of smart contracts at MakerDAO, Mariano Conti, launched a portal called Pump The Gas. It’s made to advocate for raising the gas limit to 40 million units, which the creators believe will reduce transaction fees.
A four-hour chart of the Etherium exchange rate
An account under the nickname 2077Collective on Twitter shared an interesting thought on the matter. Its owner noted that Efirium itself is not the epitome of gas, block time, cost of entry to staking and so on. Ether is about constant innovation with the goal of building a global decentralised computer for the future.
However, others in the network are wary that too much change could create risks to the stability and security of the blockchain.
For example, Tony Warstetter of the Ethereum Foundation said that increasing the gas limit all the way up to 60 million per block could lead to crashes, missed validator slots and overall destabilisation of the network. Pump The Gas platform representatives also recognised the risks and said that raising the limit too high could result in the blockchain becoming too big for single node operators. In such a case, it makes sense to gradually increase the figure while observing the balance in the ecosystem.
The talk of possibly increasing the gas limit on the Etherium network suggests that this blockchain is still experiencing scaling issues. And while Ethos-based second-tier networks are opening up access to more affordable and faster transfers, the underlying blockchain is still subject to congestion and sometimes slow performance. Perhaps the cryptocurrency's poor price performance in the current bullrun is due to this, among other things.
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