Ethereum Researcher Proposes a 100x Gas Limit Increase to Reach 2,000 TPS
Dankrad Feist’s new proposal, EIP-9698, calls for raising Ethereum’s gas limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion over four years. Feist says the change could lift Ethereum’s throughput to 2,000 TPS.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist has introduced EIP-9698, a proposal calling for a gradual 100-fold increase in Ethereum’s gas limit over the next four years.
Specifically, the plan outlines a deterministic exponential growth schedule, allowing for a 10x increase every two years starting from epoch 369017 (around June 1, 2025).
If adopted, the gas limit would rise from 36 million to 3.6 billion, potentially enabling Ethereum to process up to 2,000 transactions per second.
EIP-9698 comes as Layer 2 solutions continue to expand, but the proposal shifts focus back to scaling Ethereum’s base layer directly.
Read more: ETH Slips Against SOL but Bets on Its Upcoming Upgrade
Details of EIP-9698 and Growth Schedule
EIP-9698 proposes a deterministic schedule that would automatically increase Ethereum’s gas limit tenfold every 164,250 epochs—roughly twice over a two-year period.
The first increase is projected for spring 2027, with the final adjustment set for June 2029. Over four years, the gas limit would rise from 36 million to 3.6 billion, significantly expanding the network’s computational capacity.
“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,”
Dankrad Feist wrote in the EIP-9698 proposal.
Currently, Ethereum’s gas limit stands at 36 million, up from about 5,000 per block when the network launched in 2015. Following the London hard fork in August 2021, the limit rose from 15 million to 30 million, and validators raised it again to 36 million in February 2025.
Separately, a group of researchers led by Sophia Gold and Toni Wahrstätter has proposed a temporary increase to 150 million gas as part of the upcoming Fusaka upgrade (EIP-7935), which is scheduled to follow the Pectra update.
Related: Ethereum Developers Target May 7 for Pectra Mainnet Launch
Potential Impact and Technical Risks
The proposed increase could raise Ethereum’s throughput to around 2,000 TPS, up from the current range of 15–30 TPS.
“This change would theoretically allow Ethereum to process up to 2,000 transactions per second,”
Ethereum developer Fabrice Cheng wrote on X.
Still, developers caution that the move could place additional strain on less-optimized nodes and potentially slow block propagation times across the network.
“However, the exponential schedule with very gradual increments per epoch gives node operators and developers ample time to adapt and optimize,”
Feist acknowledged in EIP-9698.
Ultimately, the success of the proposal will depend on client support and whether node operators are willing to upgrade their infrastructure to meet the new requirements.
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