Ethereum Transaction Speed To Rise With Another Gas Limit Increase
Ethereum’s transaction throughput is set to increase in early January 2024, as the network’s gas limit is expected to rise from 60 million to 80 million following the second blob parameter-only (BPO) hard fork on January 7. This upgrade will raise blob capacity on the mainnet by 66%, allowing more transactions and smart contract operations per block, thereby improving scalability and potentially lowering fees. Blobs are off-chain data chunks that help reduce on-chain congestion and gas costs. Two optimizations—partial blob responses on the execution layer and the max blobs flag on the consensus layer—must be implemented before the gas limit increase. Developers will finalize the timeline for this change on January 5. Raising the gas limit remains a significant developer focus, with three increases throughout 2023, and an aim to reach 180 million by end-2026. While Ethereum’s throughput and fees still lag layer-1 competitors like Solana, these steps enhance its capability as a high-security, decentralized settlement layer.
