ACDC #147: Eth Devs Pump the Brakes on Pumping the Gas

Infinite Jungle

On Ep.71 of Infinite Jungle, Christine shares her main takeaways from ACDC #147. Notably, on this call, one of the main discussion topics was not about the Pectra upgrade. It was about community efforts to increase the Ethereum block gas limit. Though prominent community figureheads advocated for an increase, developers on this week’s call surfaced concerns about a little-known technical limitation on the consensus layer that would make a significant increase to the block gas limit unsafe for the network. Rather than address this limitation, developers decided not to change the protocol and instead communicate to the community that a doubling to the gas limit should not be pursued at this time. Christine advocates for why this situation was a “close call” for the stability of the Ethereum protocol and why developers need to “slow down” when it comes to advocating for and making changes to the network.

Show note links:

• ACDC #147 Call Notes (https://www.galaxy.com/insights/research/ethereum-all-core-developers-consensus-call-147/)
• Ethresearch post on the technical considerations to increasing the block gas limit (https://ethresear.ch/t/on-increasing-the-block-gas-limit-technical-considerations-path-forward/21225)
• PumptheGas website (https://pumpthegas.org/)

Timestamps:

(00:01:04) Summary of the Ethereum gas limit debate

(00:08:32) What developers decided to do about the gossip limit

(00:17:00) Concerns about Ethereum protocol complexity

(00:20:47) Why EIP 7742 was removed from Pectra

This episode was recorded on Friday, December 13, 2024.

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