Ethereum has successfully increased its block gas limit to 60 million from the previous 45 million, marking a significant boost in base-layer capacity.
This adjustment took effect automatically on November 25, 2025, after over 513,000 validators signaled support, surpassing the required majority threshold.
The move, enabled by EIP-7935, effectively doubles the network’s execution throughput in just one year and aligns perfectly with rising ecosystem activity, where daily transactions have hit record highs of around 31,000 TPS (transactions per second).
The higher gas limit allows more transactions — such as swaps, token transfers, and smart contract executions — to fit into each block, reducing congestion and potentially lowering fees during peak usage. This comes at a time when Ethereum’s Layer 1 (L1) is under increasing pressure from DeFi, NFTs, and rollup activity.
Community initiatives like “Pump The Gas,” led by developers Eric Connor and Mariano Conti, rallied stakers and client teams to push for this change since early 2024. Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter highlighted the rapid progress:
Just a year after the community started pushing for higher gas limits, Ethereum is now running with a 60M block gas limit.” Tying into the Fusaka UpgradeThis enhancement serves as a timely precursor to the Fusaka hard fork, Ethereum’s next major network upgrade scheduled for activation on December 3, 2025, at slot 13,164,544 (21:49:11 UTC).
Fusaka focuses on deeper scalability improvements, with PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) at its core — a redesign of data sampling that Vitalik Buterin has called “key to Ethereum scaling.”
It will enable more reliable and efficient data throughput for rollups (Layer 2 solutions), reducing per-node storage and bandwidth demands while supporting up to 8x higher L2 capacity.
Starting December 9, 2025, phased increases to per-block blob targets from 6/9 to 14/21 to handle larger data volumes safely. Adjusts gas costs for modular exponentiation precompiles to better reflect computational complexity, improving efficiency for cryptographic operations.
Count Leading Zeros Opcode (EIP-7939): A new native opcode for bit-counting, aiding math-heavy tasks, compression, and zero-knowledge proofs while cutting ZK proving costs.
Secp256r1 Support: Enhances compatibility for certain elliptic curve operations. A $2 million audit contest is currently underway to bolster security before mainnet deployment, following successful tests on the Hoodi testnet.
Buterin has noted that future growth will be “more targeted,” emphasizing smarter pricing and larger blocks to sustain expansion without risks. On X, the news has sparked enthusiasm, with users emphasizing “more throughput, faster settlement, stronger #Ethereum” and Bobanetwork noting “bigger blocks = cheaper transactions.”
Broader discussions highlight how this positions Ethereum for a “new phase of scaling experimentation,” especially as investor accumulation in ETH ramps up.
This dual push — immediate capacity via the gas limit and structural upgrades via Fusaka — signals Ethereum’s commitment to handling surging demand while keeping the network decentralized and secure.
From ~15-18M gas used per block ? ~30-35M gas used per block is now realistic without spiking fees. Lower L1 fees during normal traffic: Simple transfers and ERC-20 transactions are already 20-40% cheaper than two weeks ago.
Projects like Uniswap V3, Blur, and OpenSea are seeing a resurgence of direct L1 volume because it’s suddenly competitive again with L2s for many use cases. MEV becomes more lucrative: Bigger blocks = more room for arbitrage bundles ? higher tips for validators ? slightly higher staking yield.
Blob count ramp-up 6?14 target blobs per block by mid-December will cut L2 fees by an estimated 60-80% compared to March 2024 highs. L2s become dramatically cheaper than L1 again ? Expect another migration wave of retail activity from L1 back to L2s starting mid-December.
L1 becomes the “high-throughput settlement layer” for whales and complex DeFi, while L2s reclaim the “sub-cent UX” for everyone else. Both layers win. With Fusaka just days away, expect smoother performance and potentially renewed momentum for ETH’s ecosystem.
