Will the increase of Gas Limit in Ethereum lead to network paralysis?

Editor's Note: This article comes fromEthereum enthusiasts (ID: ethfans)Editor's Note: This article comes from

Ethereum enthusiasts (ID: ethfans)

, Author: Aleksandar Kuzmanovic, reprinted with authorization by Odaily.

The total gas value used on the Ethereum chain hit a new high recently after Ethereum miners voted to increase the gas cap by 25% (from 10 million to 12.5 million).

Since the BDN network of Borrow Road has been adopted by many Ethereum mining pools and service providers, it provides a unique perspective for BRoute's analysis of Ethereum network activities. We wanted to share insights with you, the most important of which is that the data shows that the recent gas cap increase was very conservative and that the current network is well positioned to support a larger adjustment.

demand remains strong

In theory, increasing the block gas limit by 25% can increase the throughput of the Ethereum network from 35 transactions per second to 44 transactions per second. Ethereum’s on-chain transaction volume remained fairly stable after the gas cap was raised, suggesting that the reason behind the skyrocketing total gas volume is likely the increased usage of more complex smart contracts that consume more gas.

Despite the increased gas cap, demand for on-chain transactions on the Ethereum network remains high. After the gas limit was raised by 25%, the blocks of Ethereum are still full, which means that the gas limit still needs to be further increased.

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As 7V God pointed out, an important indicator for evaluating the health of the Ethereum mainnet is the uncle block rate. He said: "For all blockchains based on Nakamoto's proof-of-work mechanism, any block has the risk of being declared invalid, such as not entering the main chain because another mining pool reported it before receiving the latest block. A new block that competes with it, which creates a situation where two blocks are competing at the same time, and there can only be one winner.

Another important reality is that the more transactions a block packs, the longer it will take to broadcast across the network. "

By working closely with many mining pools and operating at the Ethereum network layer, we can further verify the health of the network and the potential to support higher transactions per second (TPS). After the gas limit was increased by 25%, the uncle block rate did not increase significantly. The same happened with the 25% increase in the gas cap last September (after the Portroute network was deployed).

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- Data from Etherscan.io -

This result should come as a sigh of relief to those worried that raising the gas cap would paralyze Ethereum, as we see no significant difference between the before and after adjustments.

Summarize

Finally, we measured the fork rate of the top four Ethereum mining pools. Although they control the majority of hashrate, we found that they were not the main fork generators. Instead, most of the forks came from small and medium-sized mining pools that were the latest to join the new round of block reporting competitions. We're also working closely with them to improve connectivity.