Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a new gas limit cap to improve the network’s security and performance. Alongside researcher Toni Wahrstätter, Buterin introduced EIP-7983, which sets a maximum transaction gas limit of 16.77 million (2²⁴). The proposal was finalized on GitHub this week.
Currently, a single transaction may potentially take all the gas of a block, leaving no space to others. This poses a threat of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and network overloads.
EIP-7983 limits the gas limit, which makes transactions divided into smaller manageable chunks. This assists in enhancing network stability, enhancing zkVM compatibility, and future Ethereum scaling models.
Notably, this gas cap will be implemented at the protocol level- irrespective of the block gas limit established by validators. Transactions that consume over 16.77 million gas will automatically be rejected, at the mempool and block validation levels.
But why 16.77 million? According to Buterin and Wahrstätter, it strikes the right balance between allowing complex transactions like smart contract deployments and keeping execution time predictable.
EIP-7983 follows a previous proposal, EIP-7825, which suggested a higher gas limit of 30 million. While developers supported the idea, many preferred a lower limit for improved performance.
At current prices, a full 16.77 million gas transaction would cost around $11.38, with ETH trading near $2,550 and average gas fees at 0.266 gwei, according to Etherscan.
In case of implementation, EIP-7983 may result in Ethereum being faster, safer, and more predictable to all users.