Ethereum researcher proposes 100x gas limit boost that can scale Ethereum to 2,000 TPS

Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist has proposed a bold plan to exponentially increase Ethereum’s gas limit by 100-fold over the next four years, aiming to dramatically boost the network’s base layer scalability.

Feist published Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-9698 on Sunday, outlining a “deterministic gas limit growth schedule” that would gradually raise the gas limit from the current 36 million to 3.6 billion.

Feist, who had the blockchain’s “danksharding” data storage solution named after him, proposed EIP-9698 on April 27, 2025. Danksharding is an advanced sharding architecture for Ethereum, named after Ethereum researcher Dankrad Feist, designed to enhance the network's scalability by optimizing data management and transaction processing.

Under the plan, Ethereum clients would vote to increase the limit according to an exponential timeline, with a tenfold boost every two years, beginning around June 1, 2025.

If implemented, the upgrade could allow Ethereum’s mainnet to process up to 2,000 transactions per second (TPS), significantly closing the gap with faster blockchains like Solana, which currently handles between 800 and 1,050 TPS in real-world conditions.

“By introducing a predictable exponential growth pattern as a client default, this EIP encourages a sustainable and transparent gas limit trajectory, aligned with expected advancements in hardware and protocol efficiency,” Feist wrote in the proposal.

While the plan promises major throughput improvements, Feist acknowledged the risks.

A rapidly growing gas limit could strain less-optimized nodes and slow block propagation across the network.

However, he argued that the gradual pace of increase would give node operators and developers enough time to adapt.

Feist’s proposal comes as Ethereum researchers continue to explore gas limit expansions.

A separate initiative, EIP-7935, suggests raising the gas limit to 150 million in the upcoming Fusaka hard fork, expected in late 2025.

Ethereum’s gas limit has steadily risen over the years. It started at around 5,000 gas per block in 2015, climbed to 15 million by 2021, and reached 30 million after the Merge in 2022. The latest increase to 36 million occurred in February 2025.

The gas limit caps the total computational work that can be included in each block. Raising it would allow more transactions and more complex smart contracts to be processed, but also places higher demands on network nodes.

Ethereum’s scaling strategy has largely focused on Layer 2 solutions like Optimism, Arbitrum, and ZK Rollups, which move transactions off the mainnet. Critics argue that this creates fragmentation and complexity. By enhancing Layer 1 directly, Feist’s proposal could offer a more unified scaling approach.

Feist's EIP-9698 marks a fresh attempt to push Ethereum’s base layer capacity higher, supporting a broader goal of making Ethereum more competitive without sacrificing decentralization.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s next major upgrade, Pectra, is scheduled for May, and could set the stage for further network enhancements leading up to Fusaka.

Ethereum developers are also looking to test a fourfold increase of Ethereum’s gas limit in the Fusaka hard fork under EIP-9678. Fusaka has been planned to implement in late 2025.