Vitalik Buterin calls for modest increase in gas fees

Ethereum gas fees: Vitalik Buterin advocated for a measured increase in the network's gas limit, during a Reddit Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) session hosted by the Ethereum Foundation's research team on January 10. Buterin highlighted that the gas limit has remained unchanged for almost three years, marking the lengthiest period without alteration in the protocol's history.

"I genuinely believe that implementing a modest increase in the gas limit at this juncture is sensible," commented Buterin during the 11th AMA conducted by the research team.

Elaborating on his perspective, Buterin provided some preliminary calculations, suggesting a revision to approximately 40 million. As per data from Etherscan, the current gas limit stands at 30 million, implying a proposed increment of 33 per cent.

Since Ethereum's inception in 2015, the average gas limit has evolved from around 3 million, reflecting the platform's growing network usage and adoption.

The gas limit on Ethereum denotes the upper threshold for gas consumption during transaction executions or the activation of smart contracts within individual blocks. Gas functions as the transaction fee on the Ethereum blockchain.

Gas limits

Setting a gas limit serves the dual purpose of ensuring that blocks maintain an optimal size to sustain network performance and synchronisation. Validators can dynamically adjust the gas limit within predefined parameters during block production. While augmenting the gas limit can facilitate a greater number of transactions per block, thereby enhancing network throughput, it concurrently escalates hardware loads and amplifies vulnerabilities to potential network spam and security threats.

According to Etherscan data, the average gas prices, representing the transaction costs on Ethereum, currently hover around 35 gwei or $1.89. However, these costs have escalated since the onset of 2024, particularly for intricate smart contract operations.

Ethereum witnessed a peak in network gas fees, reaching 150 gwei in May 2023 during a surge in inscription activities. A gwei equates to one billionth of an Ether (ETH), which is currently valued at $2,584.