The percentage of Ethereum validators signaling support for increasing the network's gas limit rose to 10% as the community mobilized to increase the maximum amount of gas allowed to be spent on transactions to be included in a single Ethereum block.

On December 19, the number of validators signaling a gas limit exceeding 30 million increased to 10% of the network. Prior to December, the percentage of validators signaling an increase in gas limit was just over 1%.

Ethereum gas limit flag tracker. Source: gaslimit.pics

The increase follows efforts by Ethereum community members to advocate for increasing the gas limit to 36 million.

Increasing gas limits may result in lower transaction fees

On March 20, Ethereum core developer Eric Connor and former MakerDAO head of smart contracts Mariano Conti launched a website called “Pump The Gas” to convince the community to raise Ethereum’s gas limit to 40 million.

Their website, designed to rally support for a gas limit increase to 40 million, argues that such an adjustment could reduce layer-1 transaction fees by 15% to 33%. Connor has called on solo stakers, client teams, pools and community members to help with the initiative.

In December, the effort intensified, with Ethereum researchers joining in. On Dec. 9, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake said he had set his validator to a gas limit of 36 million, saying a 20% increase “safely greases the wheels.”

Meanwhile, Emmanuel Awosika, creative director at 2077 Collective, highlighted the benefits for developers, noting that the current gas limit can make it difficult to deploy high-demand applications. Awosika told Cointelegraph that increasing gas limits is a way for the network to show that it is giving ambitious developers something to work with.

Awosika said specific apps cannot be deployed with their current gas limit because gas prices will skyrocket once the apps go viral, leading to a “very degraded user experience.”

Risk of increasing gas limits too much

While community members are moving towards increasing gas limits on Ethereum, there are also those who are warning community members to exercise caution when increasing gas limits. Toni Wahrstätter from the Ethereum Foundation has warned that this could pose serious risks to stability and security.

The website “Pump The Gas” also acknowledged these risks and said that Ethereum’s main goal is to remain decentralized:

"If the gas limit is set too high, we can create a scenario where the chain becomes too large for solo node operators to validate and download. Technology improves, however, and it makes sense to slowly scale up as time goes on." ."

It warned that increasing gas limits too quickly could lead to “unexpected externalities” beyond storage and bandwidth.