Transaction throughput on the Ethereum network is set to be boosted again in early January with the second blob parameter-only (BPO) hard fork expected to enable the Ethereum gas limit to rise from 60 million to 80 million.
Christine Kim, vice president of the research team at Galaxy Digital, shared the news in a post Tuesday, noting the confidence Nethermind developers Ben Adams and Kamil Chodala expressed in Monday’s Ethereum All Core Developers call that all testing should be complete before the next BPO hard fork — scheduled Jan. 7 — which is expected to increase blob capacity on the Ethereum mainnet by 66%.
It would follow the first BPO hard fork on Dec. 9, which increased blob capacity by 66%.
Ethereum Foundation developer operations engineer Barnabas Busa, however, noted that two client-level optimizations are needed before another increase in the block gas limit — namely, partial blob responses on the execution layer and the max blobs flag on the consensus layer.
Blobs on Ethereum are large data chunks that store transaction and rollup data off-chain, lowering gas costs and increasing scalability without bloating the network.
Optimizing blob capacity to raise the gas limit directly increases the number of transactions and smart contract operations that can fit in each Ethereum block, boosting overall throughput while potentially lowering fees.
While raising Ethereum’s gas limit to 80 million won’t match the speed or low costs of layer 1s like Solana or Sui, it strengthens Ethereum’s appeal as a secure settlement and execution layer without significantly compromising decentralization — arguably its greatest advantage over competitors.
Ethereum devs will confirm plans early in the new year
Participants in the weekly Ethereum All Core Developers meetup will reconvene on Jan. 5 to confirm when to raise the gas limit following the second BPO hard fork.
Increasing Ethereum’s gas limit has been a priority this year
Increasing Ethereum’s gas limit to expand the network’s execution capacity has been a major focus for developers and researchers this year, with three increases.
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The first occurred in early February, raising it from 30 million to 35 million, the second in July to 45 million, and the third in late November to 60 million.
Members of the Ethereum developer and research community have expressed a common goal to raise the network’s gas limit to 180 million by the end of 2026.
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