Ethereum Implements Gas Cap, Large-Scale Transactions Suggest Potential Price Surge Towards $3,500
In a significant move towards enhancing the security and scalability of the Ethereum network, a new proposal - EIP-7983 - has been put forward by Vitalik Buterin and researcher Toni Wahrstätter. The proposal, currently in draft status on GitHub, sets a gas cap of 16.77 million gas per transaction, a move designed to prevent denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, improve network stability, and enable more predictable transaction execution.
The proposed gas cap, equivalent to 2^24 gas, is independent of the block gas limit and enforced at the protocol level. This means that no single transaction can exceed 16.77 million gas, even if the block gas limit is higher. Transactions exceeding this limit will be rejected during the verification phase and considered invalid in the mempool and block validation phases.
The new gas cap is a replacement for an earlier and higher cap proposal (EIP-7825) that suggested a 30 million gas limit per transaction but did not advance beyond draft status.
The potential impact of EIP-7983 is significant. By capping how much gas a single transaction can consume, the proposal reduces vectors for DoS attacks that exploit very large gas-consuming transactions to clog the network. The cap encourages breaking large transactions into smaller pieces, which improves overall transaction throughput and makes the network more efficient and resilient.
The cap also enhances compatibility with zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs), an important technology for Ethereum’s scalability and privacy roadmap. The 16.77 million gas limit strikes a balance that supports most existing and future functionalities, including complex decentralized finance (DeFi) operations and smart contract deployments, while maintaining execution predictability for clients, developers, and validators.
For users, the immediate effect is expected to be minimal, as most current transactions already consume less than this gas limit.
In other news, Ethereum (ETH) started the week with a strong note, bouncing back from its weekend dip and briefly crossing $2,600 on Monday. Analysts project ETH to target $2,800 short-term and $3,500 in the coming weeks. The MACD line is moving above the signal line on the ETH price chart, suggesting a bullish trend, and the RSI indicates neutral-to-bullish momentum.
The near-term target for ETH price, according to Bollinger Bands, is $2,900-$3,000. However, the current ETH price chart does not show the MACD as overbought, indicating room for further growth. The whale address 0x1fc withdrew 1,900 ETH, worth around $4.86 million, from Binance to stake, indicating a notable accumulation trend and potential bullish sentiment.
The rise in Ethereum's performance comes amid ecosystem optimism, with Ethereum price having followed a Wyckoff accumulation pattern since early June, with a local top near $2,900 and a capitulation below $2,100. Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder, announced a new proposal, EIP-7983, during the Ethereum Community Conference.
In summary, EIP-7983 represents a key step towards making Ethereum more secure, scalable, and compatible with future technologies like zkVMs, while maintaining flexibility for complex transactions. The proposal reflects Vitalik Buterin's broader vision of simplifying Ethereum’s protocol layers to reduce complexity, lower costs, and enhance network robustness over the coming years.
The proposed gas cap of 16.77 million gas in EIP-7983, a replacement for an earlier proposal, aims to reduce vectors for denial-of-service attacks by preventing single transactions from exceeding this limit, thus improving the network's efficiency and resilience.
The implementation of this gas cap in Ethereum also enhances compatibility with zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs), a significant technology for Ethereum’s scalability and privacy roadmap.
