Ethereum is scaling: TPS, gas limit up as validators back 45M target

Ethereum’s throughput ticked up on Sunday as more validators signalled their support for increasing Ethereum’s gas limit to 45 million units, which will reduce transaction fees and enable improved network scaling.  

Ethereum’s gas limit rose to over 37.3 million units on Sunday, according to Etherscan, up almost 3% from levels late last week, while several blocks were proposed with higher gas limits.

The latest gas limit increase represents the first significant climb since February, when it was raised from 30 million to 36 million.

Average Ethereum gas limits over time. Source: Etherscan

Improved transaction throughput

Higher gas limits mean more transaction throughput on Ethereum’s layer-1 network, and validators can automatically adjust the limit by about 0.1% per block when they signal support for changes.

Ethereum throughput ticked up to just below 18 transactions per second over the weekend, according to Chainspect. It has also risen since the last gas limit increase when TPS was around 15. 

Validators agree to “pump the Gas”

The weekend gas limit increase came as nearly half of all staked Ether (ETH $3,793) is now signaling support to raise the gas limit to 45 million or higher through a grassroots “pump the gas” campaign.

“Almost exactly 50% of stake are voting to increase the L1 gas limit to 45 million,” observed Vitalik Buterin on Sunday.

Currently, 47.2% of staked validators are in favor of higher gas limits, according to GasLimits.pics.

Gas limit signalling. Source: GasLimit.pics

Pump the Gas 

The gas limit refers to the maximum amount of gas spent on executing transactions or smart contracts in each block. Gas is the Ether fee required to conduct a transaction or execute a smart contract on the network.

Ethereum developers launched the “pump the gas” campaign in March 2024 to initially raise the Ethereum gas limit from 30 million to 40 million, which they claimed would reduce transaction fees on layer 1.

Buterin noted that recent Geth, the most popular Ethereum node client, team improvements make these scale increases safer with new archive node optimizations.

Ether activity and price continue higher

Ethereum network activity has also increased in recent months, with an uptick in daily transactions from around 1.1 million in April to current levels around 1.4 million, according to Etherscan. 

The uptick in network activity has correlated with an increase in price, with the asset gaining a whopping 54% over the past month. 

Ether topped $3,800 briefly in a seven-month high on Sunday as corporate treasuries and exchange-traded funds continue to load up.