Ethereum developers are raising concerns about the recent proposal by Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the network, to increase the gas limit on the blockchain. Developers are worried about the potential consequences of this proposal, particularly regarding the size of the blockchain state.
One developer, Marius van der Wijden, highlighted the difficulties of increasing the gas limit, specifically mentioning the risks to state size, missed block rate, synchronization times, history size, and client diversity. Van der Wijden emphasized that these concerns need to be addressed if increasing the gas limit is to be considered as a viable solution.
The size of the blockchain state, which includes contract data, is currently 267 gigabytes, and the total blockchain history is around 900 gigabytes. If the gas limit is increased, these sizes will continue to grow, making it more challenging to access and modify such a large amount of data.
Another challenge that arises with increasing the gas limit is the growth of history. Over the past three years, transaction counts have doubled, and with the implementation of layer 2 networks, the importance of history has increased. Although there is a proposed solution, EIP-4444, that aims to address this issue, it still requires a robust network for retrieving the history effectively.
Moreover, raising the gas limit will also affect the development of new clients for the Ethereum mainnet. Existing clients like Geth have accumulated 10 years of experience, making it difficult for new clients to catch up and learn from previous ones.
Additionally, increasing the gas limit will slow down the full sync process, as more data needs to be downloaded. This can impact the speed of various processes, including snap healing, history, and catching up.
While increasing the gas limit may solve certain problems, such as increasing transaction capacity, it also presents several challenges and drawbacks. Developers are calling for a careful consideration of these issues before implementing any changes to the gas limit on the Ethereum blockchain.
The source of the article is from the blog smartphonemagazine.nl