Tim Beiko, the chief shaman of the Ethereum Foundation, decided to play economic surgeon and… increase the gas limit in the network tenfold.
Wait… gas?
Yes-yes, not the one you have in your stove. In Ethereum, gas is the fuel for all transactions and operations. Every smart contract, every NFT with a pixel cat — all of this burns gas. And here Beiko says: 'Let's just add some fuel to the fire!' But to avoid burning himself, he immediately suggests: 'And let's increase the cost of storage operations tenfold.' This means each developer will now think twice before cranking out another meaningless token.
What is happening in the market?
While Beiko is lighting up in X, the ETH market is doing what it always does: writhing like a snake on a frying pan.
• The price of ETH has been sluggishly creeping up over the last week, staying just above $3,000.
• Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism are nervously looking towards London, where Ethereum L1 might be about to 'squeeze' some traffic from them.
• And Solana? Solana is laughing. Because there, it has long been 65,000 TPS without philosophical debates and votes in X.
Ethereum has long suffered from 'state bloat' — a condition where each node in the network has to store too much data. Imagine trying to keep accounts for everyone in the world on one calculator. Fun? Exactly. Increasing gas without raising operation costs could speed up the system's collapse. That's why Beiko — like a surgeon with a chainsaw — proposes to raise both the limit and the storage price. More gas, but also more responsibility. Kind of like giving a teenager a Ferrari and immediately raising the fines for speeding.
Good news:
• Transactions may become cheaper and faster.
• More can be done in one block.
Bad news:
• Nodes will suffer.
• Centralization will increase, as not everyone can afford to store TB of data and maintain a node.
And now the main point: this is not a solution yet, it's a discussion. Beiko launched a survey. Options:
1. Increase the gas limit and the cost of operations — fully.
2. We will increase the limit, but we won't touch storage — let it burn.
3. Let's leave everything as it is — it's fine as it is.
4. I'm just here for the memes and PEPE.
The irony is that…
…all this is happening against the backdrop of a rapid increase in interest in Layer 2 and new L1. Users have long been looking for workarounds while Ethereum decides: 'goodbye decentralization or hello state inflation?' Meanwhile, Solana, Aptos, and other competitors are munching on popcorn.
So what do we have? Tim Beiko suggests fueling a jet with tractor fuel and flying towards a decentralized future. Is this madness? Maybe. Is it genius? Perhaps. But one thing is clear: Ethereum is at a crossroads again — and while it's there, someone else might just drive down the Web3 highway without stops.
And for now — we are watching the survey, keeping the nodes in the fridge and… not forgetting to pay for gas.
