An Ethereum developer is proposing to increase its gas limit up to 100 times to achieve 2.000 transactions per second. Can this technical improvement compete with Solana's speed and efficiency?
Smart contract pioneer Ethereum remains the leading network for developing decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens, but Solana has emerged as a fierce competitor thanks to its extraordinary speed and low costs. However, Ethereum is responding strongly through technical innovations such as the EIP-9698 improvement proposal, submitted by Dankrad Feist, which aims to drastically increase the network's gas limit and, with it, the capacity of transactions per second.
Will this proposed gas increase be enough for Ethereum to overtake Solana? In this article, we'll explore how EIP-9698 promises to revolutionize speed and gas usage on Ethereum, detailing its implications and challenges.
BUY ETHEREUM ON BIT2MEEIP-9698: A proposal to increase the Ethereum gas limit
The proposal EIP-9698 It's a key initiative to address one of the most significant bottlenecks on the Ethereum network: the gas limit. Ethereum currently maintains a gas limit per block that restricts the number of operations or transactions that can be processed in each block, thus limiting the network's capacity and speed.
EIP-9698 raises an exponential increase in this gas limit, from 36 million to 3,6 billion, within approximately four years, beginning to be implemented gradually from June 2025. If this proposal is approved, this increase could allow Ethereum to process up to 2.000 transactions per second (TPS), approaching the capacity currently available to Solana, one of its main competitors, which exceeds 2.600 TPS.
This change isn't just a quantitative leap, but rather an adjustment that involves preparing the network to handle larger and more complex blocks, which would trigger an exponential increase in performance. The increase in the gas limit aims to allow each block on Ethereum to include many more transactions and smart contracts, reducing wait times and improving the overall efficiency of the blockchain platform.
To illustrate the importance of gas limitIf we think of Ethereum as a highway, the gas limit is the maximum number of vehicles that can travel on it at any given time. Increasing that limit means widening the highway to handle more traffic. without getting congested.
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Ethereum could leave Solana behind
With the potential implementation of the EIP-9698 proposal, increasing the gas limit to 100 times the volume could have a direct and transformative impact on the number of transactions Ethereum can process at once. Currently, the network handles between 15 and 30 TPS, compared to the thousands supported by Solana thanks to its speed-optimized architecture and low fees.
The goal of reaching 2.000 TPS represents a radical shift that would allow Ethereum to compete directly with Solana in terms of performance, positioning it as a network more capable of hosting high-demand decentralized applications (dApps), from decentralized finance (DeFi) to gaming and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This growth in processing power can also translate into significantly reduced gas fees for users, lowering the cost of executing transactions and smart contracts. In this sense, lower costs mean greater accessibility and adoption by the community and developers.
For example, while Solana users today enjoy very low fees and fast transactions, Ethereum has historically faced high gas costs and congestion, especially during peak activity periods, which has limited its scalability and appeal to new users.
LINK CARD AND EARNWith this proposed increase in EIP-9698, more developers could migrate or continue building on Ethereum, taking advantage of a robust ecosystem and mature tools, but with the speed and competitive costs offered by other networks. This has the potential to revitalize Ethereum's dominance in Web3 and the blockchain ecosystem in general.
Update the network gas mechanism
In his improvement proposal, Ethereum Foundation developer and researcher Dankrad Feist highlighted that, in addition to increasing the network's gas limit, his proposal seeks to update the mechanism for adjusting the gas limit, which currently relies on voting by Ethereum miners and operators. Feist commented that this mechanism, as it currently operates, lacks coordination and predictability, leading to either stagnation or overly cautious increases.
Therefore, their proposal introduces a predictable exponential growth pattern for the gas limit, which would be automatically applied as the default setting for clients, ensuring a sustainable and transparent trajectory aligned with hardware and protocol improvements, Feist said.
Other updates and improvements planned for 2026
The horizon for Ethereum is looking increasingly promising, with a series of key upgrades that will not only increase the network's capacity but also improve its efficiency, security, and functionality. Among the most notable innovations is the Glamsterdam, planned for 2026, which will implement significant improvements in scalability and privacy, consolidating the Ethereum base layer to support an ever-expanding Web3 ecosystem.
This progress is complemented by technical proposals such as EIP-4444, which will allow nodes to opt out of retaining old data, thereby reducing storage requirements and facilitating the operation of full nodes at lower costs. Meanwhile, EIP-7886 This will increase the time available for validators to process blocks, which will facilitate the integration of advanced technologies such as zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs), which can increase security and privacy without sacrificing speed.
In addition, proposals such as EIP-7928 y EIP-7863 are designed to optimize transaction organization and processing, making the network even more efficient and prepared to handle growing demand. These improvements, along with the expected implementation of EIP-9698, are part of a comprehensive plan that seeks not only to multiply the gas limit and processing speed, but also to maintain Ethereum as a network secure, decentralized and adaptable to the needs of a market that demands speed and low costs.
BUY ETHEREUM ON BIT2METhis set of updates comes at a crucial time for Ethereum, which, with the upcoming Pectra upgrade in May, is looking to address growing technological competition and consolidate its leadership in the blockchain ecosystem.
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