Ethereum miners increased the Gas limit to accelerate the network. This could have long-term consequences.
In recent days, the Ethereum mining community increased the network’s ability to run. This increase allows large amounts of transactions per second.
The increase of Gas limit is around 25% and reaches limits not seen until now on the network. This phenomenon occurs when a large number of miners make a joint effort to increase capacity.
In this way, the amount of Gas per block has increased considerably, taking off from the 10,000,000 base. At the time of writing, practically all the mining pools of this cryptocurrency reported Gas above 12,000,000.
Another Great Milestone
The fact that the Ethereum miners agreed to increase the speed of the network, has caused upheaval. On social networks, there are all kinds of opinions about this increase. Some of them are favorable and others express total displeasure with that situation.
Bitfly, the firm that owns Ethermine, one of Ethereum’s mining pools, gave its opinion. On their Twitter account, they stated that this increase in the Gas limit is another great milestone for the community.
“Ethereum miners voted to increase the Gas limit per block from 10,000,000 to 12,500,000. In theory, this means that the Ethereum network now can process ~ 44 transactions per second, instead of ~ 35. Another great milestone for the community”, they noted.
Other mining pools such as Hiveon Pool, Spark Pool, and F2Pool also reported the Gas limit above 12,000,000. However, they have not yet issued any comment on the matter.
Gas Limit Increased by Ethereum Miners
Gas is the amount paid to conduct operations on the Ethereum Blockchain network. When it comes to operations, it can be one or several transactions, the creation of centralized applications, or execution of smart contracts.
There are several reasons to use Gas. Some of them are paying transaction fees for Ethereum miners to validate. Another reason is to prevent the system from crashing with an illegal operation and, finally, so that the system does not crash with inflated executions by negative actors.
Another important factor of Gas is that it determines the number of transactions includes in a block. Increasing the block-by-block limit allows increasing the capacity of the network, making it faster.
Increase with Possible Negative Consequences
Those people unhappy with Ethereum miners for having increased the speed of the network also expressed their views. The main concern was around possible long-term consequences.
The aforementioned increase could cause the blockchain network to become too large. As a consequence, it would be difficult and expensive to keep it afloat.
Important characters in the network have had this opinion since they consider that congestion means vulnerability. The developer Péter Szilágyi sees this action of the Ethereum miners as a gesture of selfishness. He says that, for pursuing an immediate benefit, they do not take into account the consequences for the network.
Vitalik Buterin, Co-founder of Ethereum, also spoke about this subject. For him, the fact that Ethereum miners increased the Gas limit would be inconvenient. At the same time, he said that he understood the miners’ point of view.
By increasing the Gas limit, Ethereum miners enjoy lower fees and this makes the network easier to use. Buterin wrote that he had spent USD 40 in fees just to make transfers to three people. He made a clear reference to those companies that must transfer large amounts, in which they leave tens of thousands of US dollars in fees.
By Alexander Salazar
