Vitalik Buterin says it hopes that the Ethereum team will increase Layer 1 gas limit by 10 to 100 times in response to real-time proof milestones in the concise Labs ecosystem.
In a recent post, Buterin commented on X-user’s skeptical views of an announcement from Uma Roy, co-founder of Secondinct Lab., about her team’s recent demo of the “ZKVM” certification system for the Ecosystem’s running layer.
Buterin congratulates the team on their progress, but points to four areas that projects and the wider network need to tackle in order to prove in real time the functionality they can trust for layer 1 users.
“So it’s a really great job with @Pumatheuma and Team, but definitely a few steps to the final destination,” Buterin says.
Buterin highlighted how the concise lab demonstration (ETH) proof mechanism was tested at the timing of the average case rather than the worst case test. He emphasized the need for worst case timing to make the mechanism safe for wider use of the L1.
Additionally, he said in his post that the Ethereum team is aiming to raise the layer 1 gas limit by 10-100 times the current rate. According to data from YCHARTS, Ethereum’s current average gas limit was 3,599 million, a slight increase from yesterday’s average gas limit to 35,980,000.
“I want to increase the L1 gas limit by 10 to 100 times,” Buterin said.
Ethereum’s gas limit reached 3,599 million on May 21, 2025 in the last 24 hours. Source: YCHARTS
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Buterin also said there is no formal verification of the Scondinct proof mechanism yet. This is necessary to ensure that users are seamless and relatively bug-free. Not only that, real-time demonstration systems still require approximately 100 kilowatts of power to resolve the certification at proven speeds.
Buterin argued that the energy costs required to generate proofs must be as low as 10 kW in order to be available for wider participation. In this way, energy rates are household items-friendly, allowing small teams and individuals to carry out their own real-time proofs.
What are Ethereum’s current gas limits?
Compared to a year ago, on May 21, 2024, ecosystem gas restrictions increased by nearly 20%. That number has increased nearly 6 million from 30 million a year ago.
If Ethereum could raise its gas limit by 10-100 times, that gas limit could reach between 360 million and 3.6 billion. Ethereum’s gas limits represent the maximum gas units required to handle transactions or smart contracts on your network.
This acts as a cap and prevents transactions from using excessive resources and causing congestion on the network, which can lead to excessive resources that can lead to high fees.
Even if real-time proofing mechanisms become available on-chain, each requires a significant amount of gas. Therefore, to be viable on a large scale, a higher gas limit would be required compared to what the current block gas limits in the network allow.
Last February, Ethereum Network raised its gas limit for the first time since 2021. The gas limit reached 32 million gas units, exceeding 30 million for the first time in nearly five years. At the time, about 51.1% of validators approved gas limit adjustments without a hard fork.
read more: Ethereum adjusts gas limits for the first time since 2021