Alert Source Discuss
🚧 Stagnant Standards Track: Core

EIP-3756: Gas Limit Cap

Set an in-protocol cap for the gas limit

Authors lightclient (@lightclient)
Created 2021-08-21
Discussion Link https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-3756-gas-limit-cap/6921

Abstract

Set an in-protocol cap for the gas limit of 30,000,000.

Motivation

A high gas limit increases pressure on the network. In the benign case, it increases the size of the state and history faster than we can sustain. In the malicious case, it amplifies the devastation of certain denial-of-service attacks.

Specification

As of the fork block N, consider blocks with a gas_limit greater than 30,000,000 invalid.

Rationale

Why Cap the Gas Limit

The gas limit is currently under the control of block proposers. They have the ability to increase the gas limit to whatever value they desire. This allows them to bypass the EIP and All Core Devs processes in protocol decisions that may negatively affect the security and/or decentralization of the network.

No Fixed Gas Limit

A valuable property of proposers choosing the gas limit is they can scale it down quickly if the network becomes unstable or is undergoing certain types of attacks. For this reason, we maintain their ability to lower the gas limit below 30,000,000.

Backwards Compatibility

No backwards compatibility issues.

Test Cases

TBD

Security Considerations

No security considerations.

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

Citation

Please cite this document as:

lightclient (@lightclient), "EIP-3756: Gas Limit Cap [DRAFT]," Ethereum Improvement Proposals, no. 3756, August 2021. [Online serial]. Available: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-3756.