Ethereum’s block gas limit has officially risen from 45 million to 60 million after more than half of validators signaled approval—a milestone that marks the largest execution capacity expansion on Ethereum’s base layer in years.
Key Takeaways
- Ethereum’s block gas limit has increased from 45M to 60M after over half of validators signaled support.
- The expansion allows more transactions and operations per block, boosting base-layer throughput.
- The upcoming Fusaka upgrade with PeerDAS promises further improvements in data availability and scalability.
- Vitalik Buterin suggests future scaling will focus on targeted gas cost adjustments to maintain network efficiency.
A Major Capacity Boost Driven by Community Push
According to GasLimit.pics, the adjustment automatically took effect on Nov. 25, following validator consensus. Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter announced the shift publicly on X, describing it as the result of a sustained collective effort:
“Just a year after the community started pushing for higher gas limits, Ethereum is now running with a 60M block gas limit. That’s a 2× increase in a single year — and it’s only the beginning.”
More than 513,000 validators had already switched to the higher ceiling before the change activated, effectively causing block sizes to begin drifting upward and increasing the network’s throughput.
A higher gas limit simply means more operations can fit inside each block — including swaps, token transfers, NFT interactions, and smart contract transactions. This can help reduce congestion during periods of heavy on-chain activity and increase the base layer’s capacity for real economic settlement.
Why Ethereum Can Safely Handle Bigger Blocks Now
Independent blockchain researcher Zhixiong Pan attributed the successful expansion to three supporting factors:
- EIP-7623 and its block-size safeguards
- Client-level performance upgrades
- Months of stable testnet results under stress conditions
Pan explained that these developments together allow Ethereum to pursue more ambitious scaling on L1 without risking network reliability.
Vitalik Buterin: Bigger Blocks, But Not for Everything
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin supported the increase but made clear that future scaling will not be uniform. Instead, he suggested that some contract operations may become more costly in gas terms to prevent inefficient or computationally heavy calls from overloading blocks.
This aligns with a more strategic approach to block growth: expand capacity while charging appropriately for high-computation interactions. As Buterin noted, the goal is to grow execution volume while maintaining operational stability.
Network Throughput Hits All-Time High
The timing of the block gas limit increase coincides with record-breaking network performance across Ethereum’s scaling stack. Over the past 24 hours, L2 networks collectively reached 31,000 transactions per second.
The perpetuals-focused Lighter rollup led the surge with about 5,455 TPS and roughly $1.2 billion in total value locked. Base followed with around 137 TPS, with other rollups and zk-based systems contributing consistent flow.
This reflects a maturing modular scaling model — with L2s absorbing most transactional traffic and mainnet serving as the execution and settlement anchor.
The Road to Fusaka
The increase comes just days before the Fusaka hard fork, tentatively scheduled for Dec. 3 and already active in testnet environments. Fusaka introduces PeerDAS — a redesigned data availability sampling system that Vitalik has previously called “key to Ethereum scaling.”
PeerDAS is intended to improve how rollups publish data to the network, enabling more consistent bandwidth and dramatically expanding L2 capacity for users and builders.
Beyond PeerDAS, Fusaka includes consensus refinements, client upgrades, and security reinforcements — all pointing toward a more scalable and resilient Ethereum.
From “Pump the Gas” to Production Reality
The campaign to expand the gas limit began in March 2024, when developers Eric Connor and Mariano Conti launched the “Pump The Gas” initiative.
They encouraged validators, solo stakers, and community participants to push for higher base-layer capacity, arguing that the resulting throughput increase would meaningfully decrease network congestion and improve transaction costs.
Momentum accelerated through late 2024 as validators began signaling support, culminating in this week’s systemwide shift.
Only the Beginning
With the increase to 60M now active, Ethereum leaders are framing the upgrade as the start of a longer evolution rather than a final destination.
Wahrstätter called the expansion a coordinated ecosystem achievement. Buterin emphasized that Ethereum’s growth ahead will be more targeted — increasing general block space while selectively adjusting gas rules to avoid inefficiencies.
What’s clear now is that Ethereum has entered a new phase of base-layer performance. Higher block capacity, combined with the upcoming Fusaka hard fork and continued rollup growth, positions the network to support larger volumes of activity — not just at L2, but directly on the main chain as well.
Ethereum’s shift to 60 million gas stands as its strongest base-layer capacity expansion in four years, and the community consensus behind it suggests confidence in the network’s growing technical maturity and responsiveness to real user demand.
