In an attempt to reduce the fees paid for using the network's block space, Ethereum developers created «pump the gas.» This is a movement on social networks that aims to promote the increase of gas limits in each Ethereum block. According to Explain developer Eric Conner, Pump the gas has the potential to decrease fees on Ethereum by 15% to 33%. «We ask for collaboration from individual stakers, client teams, pools and the community,» he wrote, in reference to each Ethereum validator establishing a higher amount as the gas limit to be used in each block. Along with Conner, the Argentine Mariano Conti participated in the development of Pump the gas. On X's account of him, stood out the decision of certain validators to create blocks with a limit of 40 million gwei (minimum unit of ETH) as a gas limit. That is precisely the limit suggested by Conner and Conti.
Even Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and leader of Ethereum, was in favor of a measure like this. In January, the developer noted that the gas limit has not increased since 2021, despite the technological and adoption advances that Ethereum has had since then. Therefore, an increase is “reasonable,” he says.
At the time of writing, the most recent blocks on Ethereum still have the limit of 30 million in gas. Source: Blockchair. As reported by BitcoinDynamic, Ethereum activated its Dencun update a few days ago. Among other things, Dencun introduced changes in the organization of data in network accounting, so as to optimize its use and, thereby, reduce commissions, especially in second layer (L2) networks.
How does the gas limit affect commissions?
Regarding the direct relationship between gas limit and commissions, the following is explained on the official Pump the gas site. Gas is a fundamental concept to understand how the Ethereum network works. It represents the computational work done by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for each operation, and each operation consumes gas. Basically, gas is a unit to measure the resources consumed by the EVM, such as CPU cycles, disk access, and memory.
Transactions on the Ethereum network involve several key components: gas, gas price (the fee paid per unit of gas), transaction cost (gas used multiplied by the gas price), gas limit (the maximum amount of gas a user is willing to pay for a transaction ) and gas limit per block (the maximum gas allowed in a block). Increase the gas limit per block, as proposed, from 30,000,000 to 40,000,000, aims to allow Ethereum to process a higher load of transactions per daywhich would potentially reduce gas fees on layer 1 (L1) Ethereum by an estimated 15-33%.
“40 million is the new 30 million”, the motto of Pump the gas. Source: Pump the gas. If a transaction consumes more gas than the set limit, it is canceled and the changes are reverted, but the user must still pay any gas fees associated with the work performed up to that point. When demand on the Ethereum network is high, users compete to have their transactions included in the blocks. In these circumstances, miners tend to prioritize transactions that offer higher gas fees, as this provides them with higher rewards for including those transactions in a block. Increase gas limit allows complex or computationally intensive transactions to be processed more easily, as they have a higher gas limit to complete. Additionally, by increasing gas limits, users can set lower gas rates and still have a high probability of having their transactions confirmed quickly. This is because miners have more room to include transactions with lower gas fees in blocks since there is more room for total gas capacity.