On Thursday, Ethereum’s core developers gathered for their final all-core devs call of 2024, spotlighting a series of important developments on the road to the Pectra upgrade. Key topics included plans for raising the network’s gas limit, refining consensus-layer coordination, and introducing several new proposals ahead of the next major update.
A notable announcement was the intention to increase Ethereum’s gas limit—an adjustment that has not been undertaken in over three years. Although the new target is set around 36 million gas per block, current technical constraints, particularly the 10 MiB “GOSSIP_MAX_SIZE” limit on validator block propagation, serve as a natural checkpoint. This sizing cap restricts how large blocks can grow without overloading the network’s communication layer.
Progress on the Mekong testnet, which has already adopted the 36 million gas limit, provided some reassurance. Developers reported stable operations under these conditions. However, they cautioned against pushing the limit beyond 40 million on mainnet without further solutions to the gossip-layer bottlenecks. Some validator clients, including Prysm, need additional development to adjust to a dynamically changing gas limit.
Raising the gas limit does not require a hard fork. Instead, validators can signal support directly, and while only about 16.8% have done so thus far, the number is climbing. Grassroots campaigns like PumpTheGas.org encourage more validators to back the change, reflecting the community-driven nature of Ethereum’s iterative improvements.
Meanwhile, the Pectra upgrade remains a central focus for Ethereum’s 2025 roadmap, with a target release in Q1. Developers expect to launch Devnet-5 by year’s end to test new features before mainnet deployment. Among the proposals discussed, EIP-7742 will be replaced by EIP-7840, which offers greater flexibility in managing “blob counts”—critical for handling the additional data demanded by layer-2 rollups. By separating maximum and target blob counts, the network can fine-tune block capacity and maintain stability even as it scales.
Another area of refinement comes in the form of EIP-2537, which tackles gas repricing for Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) cryptographic operations. This update aims to ensure that these resource-intensive computations are assigned fair costs, eliminating inefficiencies and rewarding developers for using network resources responsibly.
Beyond these individual proposals, an EVM resource pricing working group is set to launch in January to harmonize gas cost calculations across different operations. The team’s goal is to create a more efficient, predictable, and equitable fee structure for Ethereum’s developer community.
Additionally, EIP-4444, which deals with the timeline for pre-Merge history expiry, requires further testing before rolling out on May 1, 2025. Developers also expressed a need for clearer validator node requirements to help ensure more consistent participation and network health. Another proposed change would classify “Meta” EIPs strictly as process-related, potentially simplifying the management of future Ethereum hard forks.
Throughout the call, the collaborative nature of Ethereum’s development process was on full display. The community’s careful approach to balancing performance and stability—evidenced by incremental gas limit adjustments and the rollout of the Pectra upgrade—underscores Ethereum’s ongoing commitment to transparent, community-driven progress.
