• Ethereum plans major gas limit and cost adjustments in 2026 to optimize node efficiency.
• The network recently hit a 60M block gas limit, doubling capacity within a year.
• Future scalability will rely on protocol changes and client-level improvements.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined a shift in the network’s scaling approach for 2026. Instead of uniformly increasing capacity across all operations, Ethereum will focus on “targeted optimization.”

This means raising the gas limit by up to 5× while simultaneously increasing gas costs by 5× for operations that are resource-intensive.

Operations affected include creating new storage slots using SSTORE, certain other SSTORE operations, precompiled contracts (excluding elliptic-curve computations), CALLs to large contracts, complex arithmetic instructions, and calldata.

Buterin emphasized that this strategy aims to increase overall throughput while keeping inefficient operations from overloading network nodes.

He described the upcoming changes as part of a broader trend toward “continued growth but more targeted, less uniform growth” for Ethereum. By selectively repricing costly operations, the network hopes to balance capacity expansion with the practical limits of node processing.

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Ethereum’s Community and Developers Drive Network Scalability

Just a year after Ethereum’s community pushed for higher gas limits, the network has reached a 60 million block gas limit, a twofold increase from the previous year. Buterin credited client teams, researchers, and community contributors for mobilizing the effort.

Researcher Andy Yang highlighted the milestone, questioning whether future gains will come primarily from protocol-level changes, such as gas repricing or code merkleization, or from improvements in client performance.

The implication is that Ethereum’s scalability will increasingly depend on both software innovation and infrastructure optimization.

Next Steps and Potential Bottlenecks

Ethereum developer Toni Wahrstatter offered insight into upcoming enhancements. BALs (Block Acceleration Layers), assuming 8 threads, could provide an 8× scaling improvement, while ePBS (EIP-7732) might add another 3–4×.

However, state growth and data bandwidth could emerge as bottlenecks if not addressed through repricing or client optimizations.

Wahrstatter noted that pushing toward a 500 million gas limit, a potential target after the upcoming “Glamsterdam” upgrade, would make state churn and absolute size key limiting factors. Without optimizations unlocked by BALs, syncing could also become a concern.

This strategic combination of selective gas limit increases, repricing inefficient operations, and client-level improvements positions Ethereum for scalable growth in the coming year while maintaining node stability. 

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