Toni Wahrstätter, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, has called for caution and patience in expanding Ethereum's gas limits, highlighting the technical challenges the network is facing.
This call comes amid a lively discussion in the Ethereum community about the possibility of raising the gas limit – a change that could enhance network performance while simultaneously posing risks to stability and security.
According to Wahrstätter, the constraints in the current consensus layer client specifications have created barriers to exceeding the 36 million gas limit without significant upgrades to the protocol.
The technical limits when exceeding the 36 million gas threshold
Currently, the specifications of the Ethereum consensus layer dictate that the maximum uncompressed block size is 10 mebibytes (MiB) to ensure efficiency in block propagation across the network. This is a key factor in maintaining propagation speed without causing delays or instability.
If the gas limit is raised to 60 million per block, it will exceed this size limit, leading to propagation errors, loss of validator position, and the potential risk of undermining network stability.
Although these limits may be seen as constraints, they are designed to minimize risks, such as denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Larger blocks not only push network nodes to their processing limits but may also create potential vulnerabilities without providing immediate benefits.
With a limit of 36 million gas, the block size remains within a safe range for propagation, helping to maintain the stability of the consensus layer. However, exceeding this threshold may result in valid blocks not being fully propagated, causing disruptions in validator operations and reducing network performance.
Moreover, the lack of empirical data on network performance under higher gas limit conditions adds to the complexity. Therefore, core developers emphasize the importance of a cautious approach to safeguard the security and reliability of the network.
Parithosh Jayanthi, a member of the ethPandaOps team at the Ethereum Foundation, also shares this view and calls for developers to focus on experimentation and data collection to assess the pros and cons of raising the gas limit.
Pectra 2: A roadmap towards a higher gas limit
To address the aforementioned challenges, Ethereum is preparing to deploy the Pectra 2 network upgrade, which includes two significant improvement proposals aimed at laying the groundwork for increasing the gas limit.
Ethereum Improvement Proposal 7623 (EIP-7623) is the first proposal, aimed at reducing block size in the worst-case scenario, thereby minimizing DoS risks and allowing safe capacity increases.
Ethereum Improvement Proposal 7691 (EIP-7691) is the second proposal, focusing on increasing the target and the maximum number of blobs per block. This not only supports handling larger storage and transmission requests but also provides empirical data on network performance. Blobs are spaces in a block reserved for receiving data from layer 2 blockchains.
With the implementation of these changes, Pectra 2 is expected to provide valuable insights into the network's ability to handle larger blocks while ensuring stability and efficiency.
