Ethereum raises block gas limit to 60 million ahead of Fusaka

Ethereum increased its mainnet block gas limit to 60 million after a validator majority signaled approval, expanding capacity on the base layer ahead of the Fusaka hard fork.

Under Ethereum’s consensus rules, the parameter adjusted automatically once approval passed 50%. The new ceiling, up from 45 million, marks the highest block gas limit the Ethereum mainnet has ever operated with.

Raising the block gas limit lets more computation fit into each block, including token transfers, swaps and smart contract calls. In practice, a higher limit can ease congestion during busy periods and push more activity through the mainnet.

Independent researcher Zhixiong Pan pointed to three developments that made a higher limit feasible: EIP-7623, which adds protocol guardrails for block size; performance improvements across multiple clients that lift throughput; and extended testing that showed reliable block propagation under heavier load.

Researcher Ethereum Foundation, Toni Wahrstätter, credited coordinated work across client teams, validators and researchers. 

Just a year after the community started pushing for higher gas limits, Ethereum is now running with a 60M block gas limit. That’s a 2× increase in a single year — and it’s only the beginning,

he wrote.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin indicated the network is shifting from uniform capacity increases to more targeted optimization. He has argued that any future raises could be paired with higher gas costs for computationally heavy operations, aiming to keep block processing efficient as effective block sizes grow.

The timing aligns with the Fusaka hard fork, targeted for December and already activated on public testnets. Fusaka introduces PeerDAS, a redesign of data availability sampling intended to improve how rollup data is published and retrieved. The release also includes client updates, consensus refinements and security hardening.

Support for the change followed a campaign launched in March 2024. Developers Eric Conner and Mariano Conti started “Pump The Gas,” urging validators, client teams, staking pools and solo stakers to adopt a higher limit to ease pressure on the base chain.

Community dashboards show the share of validators proposing blocks with the higher setting rising in recent weeks. As more operators update configurations, larger blocks propagate more consistently, lifting base-layer throughput.