Ethereum’s throughput increased on Sunday as more validators signaled support for raising the network’s gas limit to 45 million units—a move aimed at lowering transaction fees and enhancing scalability.
According to Etherscan, Ethereum’s gas limit climbed to over 37.3 million units on Sunday, marking a nearly 3% rise from late last week. Several blocks were also proposed with even higher gas limits.
This marks the first major increase since February, when the limit was raised from 30 million to 36 million units.
Enhanced transaction capacity
Higher gas limits translate to increased transaction throughput on Ethereum’s layer-1 network. Validators can gradually raise the gas limit by approximately 0.1% per block when signaling support for such changes.
According to Chainspect, Ethereum’s throughput reached just under 18 transactions per second over the weekend—up from around 15 TPS following the previous gas limit increase.
Validators move to “pump the gas”
The weekend’s gas limit increase coincided with growing support from validators, as nearly half of all staked Ether now backs raising the gas limit to 45 million or more—a push driven by the grassroots “pump the gas” campaign.
“Almost exactly 50% of stake are voting to increase the L1 gas limit to 45 million,” noted Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Sunday.
As of now, 47.2% of staked validators support higher gas limits, according to GasLimits.pics.
Pump the gas
The gas limit defines the maximum amount of gas that can be used to process transactions and smart contracts in a single Ethereum block. Gas refers to the Ether fees required to carry out these operations on the network.
In March 2024, Ethereum developers launched the “pump the gas” campaign with the goal of raising the gas limit from 30 million to 40 million units—aiming to lower transaction fees on Ethereum’s layer 1.
Vitalik Buterin highlighted that recent upgrades by the Geth team—the most widely used Ethereum node client—have made these scaling efforts safer, thanks to new archive node optimizations.
Ether usage and price continue to climb
Ethereum network activity has been on the rise in recent months, with daily transactions climbing from approximately 1.1 million in April to around 1.4 million currently, according to Etherscan.
This surge in activity has coincided with a sharp price increase, as Ether has gained an impressive 54% over the past month.
On Sunday, Ether briefly surpassed $3,800—its highest level in seven months—as corporate treasuries and exchange-traded funds continue to accumulate the asset.
