Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and researcher Toni Wahrstätter have proposed a new Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP-7983), which seeks to institute a hard cap of 16.77 million gas units per individual transaction. The aim of this limitation, according to its authors, is to enhance Ethereum’s resilience against certain denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, bolster network stability, and provide users with more predictable transaction processing costs.
Under the network’s existing architecture, Ethereum currently permits single transactions to potentially consume an entire block’s gas capacity. This vulnerability exposes the blockchain to possible DoS attacks and risks instability by allowing individual transactions to monopolize block space and resources.
With the proposed 16.77 million gas limit per transaction, Ethereum would effectively block single transactions from consuming all available gas in a block. Any transactions attempting to declare gas limits exceeding this threshold would be automatically rejected during the block validation stage, becoming ineligible for inclusion.
The authors emphasize that the EIP-7983 does not alter Ethereum’s existing mechanism for adjusting total block gas limits, which remain flexible and are set by consensus among miners and validators. Instead, the proposal specifically targets individual transactions at the protocol layer, ensuring a more balanced allocation of block resources.
Buterin and Wahrstätter argue that a limit of 16.77 million gas units strikes a practical balance by still allowing complex transactions such as decentralized finance (DeFi) transactions and smart contract deployments, while significantly reducing security and operational risks. Current usage statistics show that the majority of Ethereum transactions already fall comfortably below this threshold, meaning users are unlikely to experience any substantial disruptions to their routine activities.
In addition to improving security, the gas cap aligns well with Ethereum’s ongoing push to adopt zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs). These environments are best suited for handling smaller, manageable transaction components, rather than single large operations. A per-transaction gas limit naturally encourages developers to break down larger activities into modular units, facilitating more efficient and secure interactions with zkVM frameworks.
The proposal (EIP-7983) follows in the footsteps of earlier initiatives—such as EIP-7825—that similarly aimed to standardize and make transaction execution costs more predictable. Together, these proposals are part of Ethereum’s broader efforts to tackle inherent complexity, address performance limitations, and improve overall protocol design.
This move by Ethereum’s prominent figures comes amid growing competition from rival smart contract blockchains, particularly Solana, which recently surpassed Ethereum in certain key metrics. For instance, Solana recorded higher decentralized application (dApp) revenue and decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volumes, demonstrating the increased appeal of rival networks. Such heightened competition underscores Ethereum’s need to improve network stability, simplify development processes, and reduce operational costs.
These recent efforts by Buterin are part of a wider attempt to restructure Ethereum towards simplicity and efficiency, aligning with his recent proposals advocating partial stateless nodes to further ease the hardware requirements for Ethereum network participants.
