The number of validators supporting Ethereum in increasing the gas fee limit per block has surged to 10% in December. The percentage of Ethereum’s community favoring the network’s initiative increased following the project’s validators rallied to advocate maximum gas limit availability of above $30 million per block. It bears mentioning that around 1% of the validators were backing this decision before Dec.
Interestingly, in a bid to support the gas fee limit increase from $30 million to $40 million, one of the Ethereum developers launched a website which is pumpthegas.org on March 20. The developer Eric Connor, who launched the site and previously worked as head of the smart contract at MakerDAO Mariano Coonti, cited the importance of scaling up the network’s capability with enhanced gas fee.
Eric further pointed out that raising the gas limit will decrease the transaction fee from 15% to 33% for layer-1 blockchain users.
Ethereum community rallied to back the move
With the Ethereum researcher joining the debate in Dec, key supporters of the increased gas limit accelerated their efforts to promote the initiative. Likewise, one of Ethereum’s researchers, Justin Drake, expressed on Dec. 9 that he configured his validators for a 20% surge in gas limit and added that the $36 million gas limit per block “safely greases the wheels.”
Initially, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin suggested to higher the gas fee limit from long-static $30 million to $40 million. Notably, the ETH network’s gas remained unchanged since Aug. 2021. Similarly, it has been a few months since the demand to increase the gas limit gained attraction.
Increasing gas limits also comes with risks
While the community members are increasingly supporting pumpthegas move, some of the industry players also issued warnings about the risks it poses. Toni Wahrstätter from the non-profit crypto firm Ethereum Foundation cautioned that the move could drive instability and insecurity in the network.
Interestingly, pumpthegas site also notifies the community about the risks enhanced gas limit could cause. It also mentions that keeping Ethereum decentralized is the core goal. The website reads:
If the gas limit is raised too high we could create a scenario where the chain becomes too large for solo node operators to validate and download. Technology improves however and it does make sense to slowly increase it as time goes on.
