Ethereum Could Get Faster in January With Gas Limit Rise to 80M Following BPO2 Fork

Ethereum developers discussed raising the block gas limit from 60 million to between 75 million and 80 million gas during their All Core Developers meeting. Nethermind developer Ben Adams stated confidence in implementing the increase following the second blob parameter-only (BPO) fork scheduled for January.

The gas limit increase requires two client-level optimizations before deployment. On the execution-layer side, partial blob responses require implementation via the engine_getblobsv3 method. On the consensus layer side, the max blobs flag requires integration across client software.

Client Teams Express January Readiness

Ethereum Foundation Developer Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa requested that all execution layer client teams include partial blob responses in their next stable releases. Consensus layer teams received similar instructions to implement the max blobs flag in upcoming versions.

Nethermind developer Kamil Chodola expressed optimism that client teams will be ready to proceed with the block gas limit increase in January. This follows additional testing scheduled for this week and the second BPO fork activation.

The second blob parameter-only fork activates on mainnet on Wednesday, January 7. This upgrade will increase blob capacity by an additional 66% following the first BPO fork that delivered a 66% capacity boost when it activated on December 9.

Chodola highlighted ongoing benchmarking work for repricing various opcodes planned for the Glamsterdam fork. He stated that testing remains necessary before finalizing repricing numbers. Ethereum Foundation Robust Incentives Group (RIG) Researcher Maria Silva offered to organize additional breakout meetings in the new year to support opcode repricing efforts.

Ethereum’s Network Scaling Strategy

The gas limit increase is part of Ethereum’s Layer-1 scaling strategy to improve network throughput. Higher gas limits allow more transactions per block, increasing the network’s processing capacity without requiring fundamental protocol changes.

Developers agreed to cancel the next two weeks of ACD calls from December 22 through January 1 for the holiday period. The team will reconvene on Monday, January 5, for a makeup All Core Developers Execution call and resume regular twice-weekly meetings starting that same week.

The timeline will help Ethereum improve performance early in 2026. Client teams have several weeks to complete required optimizations before the January 7 BPO2 fork activation that will enable the gas limit adjustment.

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