Ethereum hits 45 million block gas limit in latest scaling move

Ethereum, the world's second-largest blockchain by market capitalization, saw its gas limit spike to 45 million units — a 25% rise from its previous level of 36 million , set in February 2025.

Nearly half of the network's validators signaled support for the increase, and the gas limit hike was activated at block number 22,968,004 .

This development, driven by strong community support, marked a step toward improving the network's transaction scaling capacity. The gas limit, which caps the computational effort allowed per block on Ethereum's blockchain, determines the number of transactions and smart contracts that can be processed simultaneously.

An increase in the block gas limit enables each block to process more data, allowing the network to handle a higher volume of transactions. Unlike major protocol upgrades, this change does not require a hard fork. Validators can adjust their node configurations when proposing blocks. Once more than 50% of validators signal support, the block gas limit adjusts automatically.

The gas limit was previously capped at 30 million but was raised to 36 million in February. The prior adjustment occurred in 2021, when it doubled from 15 million to 30 million units.

The push to 45 million is part of Ethereum's broader scaling roadmap, with validators aiming for a 60 million block gas limit target in the short term and a long-term goal of 150 million gas per block — potentially achievable through the upcoming Fusaka hard fork via Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7935 .

To mitigate risks, developers have introduced safeguards, such as EIP-7983 , which caps individual transaction gas usage at 16.77 million units to prevent denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and maintain network stability.