Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and researcher Toni Wahrstätter have introduced a new proposal, EIP-7983, to establish a per-transaction gas limit on the Ethereum network. This move aims to bolster network resilience against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, improve stability, and make transaction costs more predictable.
Currently, Ethereum enforces a per-block gas limit of around 36 million but has no limit on individual transactions. EIP-7983 proposes a new cap of 16,777,216 gas (2^24) per transaction.
The proposal, published recently, emphasizes that this cap strikes a balance, allowing for complex operations like contract deployments and advanced DeFi interactions while ensuring consistent performance. Without such a limit, the network faces risks including inefficient load distribution, vulnerability to quadratic attacks, and complications for zero-knowledge Virtual Machine (zkVM) compatibility and parallel execution.
EIP-7983 specifies that the proposed 16.77 million gas limit would apply universally, irrespective of the block gas limits set by miners or validators. Any transaction exceeding this new limit would be rejected.
While the proposed change is not backward compatible, its impact is expected to be minimal, as most current transactions fall well below the suggested cap.
