Ethereum Hikes Gas Limit Amid Historic Volatility

The Ethereum (ETH) network has raised its gas limit for the first time in almost three years, following a vote by validators.

The last time the gas limit was raised it went from 15m to a cap of 30m, during the token’s ‘hard fork’ into a proof-of-stake blockchain in August 2022. Ethereum’s gas limit then hit 32m earlier today. Validators voted 52% to approve the move, according to data from Gaslimit.pics (which tracks voting on gas limit increases) and 48% to block it.

What are gas limits?

On the Ethereum network, “gas” denotes a unit of computational energy that is expended when an action is performed, like gas in a car. This means there is now a higher threshold of actions that can be performed on a single block, potentially reducing gas fees or the cost per transaction.

But gas limits have historically been a point of contention within the Ethereum community. Many have lobbied to increase these limits to lower transaction fees, including Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin in a Reddit post, while others have pointed out the risks that suddenly raising the gas limit could pose to the network.

Some researchers at the Ethereum Foundation have claimed that gas limits over 40 million could “fail to propagate as expected” and produce “bottlenecks.”

Ethereum’s performance capacity may have been set for an upgrade anyway. The network is expecting another hard fork, Pectra, in March 2025, which will double “the capacity of L2s,” if Buterin’s predictions are correct.

Ethereum’s bumpy week

The news comes as Ethereum has been recording some of its most volatile performance in recent memory. Ethereum lost more than 17.8% of its value in a single day earlier this week, its largest single-day fall since May 2021, amid $611 million in ETH long and short positions liquidated. Many attributed this to the broader economic implications of Trump’s tariff plans. Ethereum also hit its lowest level versus Bitcoin in almost five years.

The cryptocurrency bounced back earlier in today’s trading, following Trump plans to pause proposed tariffs on Canada.

Ethereum has also been garnering support from some extremely high-profile figures. President Donald Trump’s third son, Eric Trump, tweeted that it was “a great time to add $ETH.”