Transaction throughput on the Ethereum network is set to be boosted again in early January with the second blob parameter-only (BPO) hard fork. This upgrade is expected to enable the Ethereum gas limit to rise from 60 million to 80 million.
Christine Kim, vice president of the research team at Galaxy Digital, shared the news in a post on Tuesday. She noted the confidence expressed by Nethermind developers Ben Adams and Kamil Chodala during Monday’s Ethereum All Core Developers call. They indicated that all testing should be complete before the next BPO hard fork scheduled for January 7, which is expected to increase blob capacity on the Ethereum mainnet by 66%.
This upcoming upgrade will follow the first BPO hard fork on December 9, which also increased blob capacity by 66%.
However, Ethereum Foundation developer operations engineer Barnabas Busa highlighted that two client-level optimizations are still needed before another increase in the block gas limit can occur. These optimizations include partial blob responses on the execution layer and the max blobs flag on the consensus layer.
### What Are Blobs on Ethereum?
Blobs on Ethereum are large data chunks that store transaction and rollup data off-chain. This mechanism lowers gas costs and increases scalability without bloating the network. Optimizing blob capacity to raise the gas limit directly increases the number of transactions and smart contract operations that can fit in each Ethereum block. The result is boosted overall throughput and potentially lower fees.
While raising Ethereum’s gas limit to 80 million won’t match the speed or low costs of layer 1 blockchains like Solana or Sui, it strengthens Ethereum’s appeal as a secure settlement and execution layer. Importantly, this improvement does not significantly compromise decentralization, which remains Ethereum’s greatest advantage over competitors.
### Next Steps for Ethereum Developers
Participants in the weekly Ethereum All Core Developers meetup will reconvene on January 5 to confirm the timeline for raising the gas limit following the second BPO hard fork.
### Increasing Ethereum’s Gas Limit: A 2023 Priority
Increasing Ethereum’s gas limit to expand the network’s execution capacity has been a major focus for developers and researchers this year. There have already been three increases:
– In early February, the gas limit was raised from 30 million to 35 million
– In July, it increased to 45 million
– In late November, it reached 60 million
Members of the Ethereum developer and research community share a common goal to raise the network’s gas limit to 180 million by the end of 2026.
This steady progress highlights Ethereum’s commitment to scalability improvements, ensuring the network can support growing demand while maintaining its security and decentralization.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-could-get-faster-gas-limit-rise-january