Ethereum has reached a major milestone in its base-layer scalability, with the network’s mainnet block gas limit rising to 60 million, marking the highest execution capacity seen in more than four years.
The increase follows a surge in validator signaling throughout November, with data from Gas Limit Pics showing more than 513,000 validators voting in favor of the higher configuration, enough to trigger an automatic network-wide adjustment.
Understanding the Gas Limit Increase
The gas limit essentially determines how much computation a block can contain. By raising it from 45 million to 60 million, Ethereum now allows more on-chain activity per block, including decentralized exchange swaps, smart contract calls, token transfers, and on-chain DeFi operations.
In practical terms, this upgrade reduces congestion during peak periods and meaningfully increases throughput at Layer 1. This shift represents a departure from Ethereum’s historically conservative approach to L1 scaling.
Driving Forces Behind the Scaling Shift
For several years, concerns over state bloat, block propagation delays, and execution-layer bottlenecks kept gas-limit increases on hold. But that stance began to change in 2024, driven by technical advancements and a transition toward what Ethereum developers describe as an “empirical science” approach to scaling.
Key Technical Advancements
Key to unlocking the higher limit was EIP-7623, which increased the gas cost of calldata to cap worst-case block sizes. Developers also optimized performance across major execution clients, including Nethermind, Erigon, and Reth, identifying and improving bottlenecks such as ModExp via proposals like EIP-7883.
As a result, clients are now able to process 60-million-gas blocks comfortably within the protocol’s 4-second consensus window.
Validation Through Testnets
Stress tests on Sepolia and Hoodi testnets further confirmed that the network could handle higher block loads without propagation delays or increased orphan rates.
Future Outlook for Ethereum Scaling
Looking ahead, Ethereum core developers are already signaling openness to exploring 70M–100M gas limits, though further upgrades, particularly in cryptographic operation efficiency and state-growth management, will be required.
The 60M milestone marks one of Ethereum’s most significant base-layer performance boosts since 2021 and lays the groundwork for a new phase of L1 scaling alongside continued rollup-centric development.