Data: Over 30% of ETH stakers express support for increasing BlockGas limit

PANews reported on January 16th that according to data compiled by ETH Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter, over 30% of Ethereum validators expressed support for increasing the gas limit of BlockGas – a key parameter that determines the network’s transaction processing capacity. Currently, the gas limit on Ethereum is 30 million, and one-third of validators believe that the BlockGas limit should be raised from 30 million to 40 million Gas. Validators proposing and validating blocks can modify their node configurations to indicate support for raising the gas limit without the need for a hard fork. Once more than 50% of validators agree, the BlockGas limit will automatically adjust to the next agreed-upon level, with the target being 40 million Gas. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also suggested a 33% increase last year. After realizing the need to increase capacity, an initiative called ‘Pump the Gas’ was launched last year, advocating for an increase in the gas limit. The initiative is led by Eric Connor, an ETH developer, and Mariano Conti, former head of smart contracts at MakerDAO, with the aim of raising awareness in the ETH community about the gas limit and its role in improving ETH scalability. The timeline for increasing the gas limit is still unclear. The urgency to increase the gas limit has been reduced after the implementation of proto-danksharding (blobs) in last year’s Dencun upgrade. The addition of blobs has alleviated some scalability issues by providing a new method of data storage and management, which is particularly useful for Layer 2 rollups. However, if the demand for decentralized applications on ETH continues to grow over time, increasing the gas limit will become necessary.