Ethereum co-founder proposes gas limit cap of 16.77 million per transaction to reduce risk of DoS attacks

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, along with researcher Toni Wahrstätter, proposed EIP-7983, which aims to establish a new gas limit for the network.

The proposal introduces a 16.77 million (2^24) gas limit per transaction. Currently, Ethereum sets a per-block gas limit of approximately 36 million, with no limit per transaction.

According to the proposal, published on Sunday, the new gas limit is expected to improve the network's resilience against certain denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, enhance network stability, and offer more predictable transaction processing costs.

"The proposed cap of 16,777,216 gas (2^24) provides a balance between allowing complex transactions while maintaining predictable execution bounds," the proposal said. "This value enables most current use cases, including contract deployments and advanced DeFi interactions, while ensuring consistent performance characteristics."

Leaving the network without a per-transaction gas limit can bring risks such as inefficient load distribution, vulnerability to quadratic attacks, and challenges for zkVM compatibility and parallel execution.

EIP-7983 states that the proposed 16.77 million cap will apply universally, regardless of the block gas limits set by miners or validators. Transactions exceeding this limit will be rejected, according to the proposal.

It added that the proposed change is not backward compatible but is expected to impact only a small number of users and dApps, as current transactions mostly fall significantly under the proposed limit.