During the day on Friday, the Ethereum mining community increased the network’s ability to run. This is an increase that allows large amounts of transactions per second.
The increase of the Gas limit is around 25% and reaches limits not seen so far on the network. This phenomenon, it should be noted, occurs when a large number of miners make a joint effort to increase capacity.
In this way, the number of Gas per block has increased considerably, taking off from the 10,000,000 base. Virtually all pools mining of this cryptocurrency, at the time of writing, reported Gas above 12,000,000.
“Another great milestone for the community”
The fact that the Ethereum miners agreed to increase the speed of the network, has brought seizure. On social networks, there are opinions of all kinds about this increase. Some favorable and others that express their total displeasure with the fact.
For example, Bitfly, the firm that owns Ethermine, one of ETH’s mining pools, gave its opinion. Through a message in his account on the social network Twitter, he assured that this increase in the Gas limit is another great milestone for the community.
“Ethereum miners voted to increase the Gas limit per block from 10,000,000 to 12,500,000. In theory, this means that the Ethereum network now has the ability to process ~ 44 transactions per second, instead of ~ 35. Another great milestone for the community ”, they pointed out.
Other mining pools such as Hiveon Pool, Spark Pool and F2Pool also reported the gas limit above 12,000,000. However, they have not issued, until now, any comment on the matter.
What is that Gas that the Ethereum miners increased?
In simple words, Gas is the amount paid to carry out operations on the Ethereum Blockchain network. It should be noted that when it comes to operations, it can be one (or several) transactions, creation of centralized applications or execution of smart contracts.
There are several reasons to cancel at Gas. Some of them are paying transaction fees for Ethereum miners to validate. Another reason is to prevent the system from crashing with an illegal operation and, finally, so that the system does not crash with inflated executions by negative actors.
Another of the important factors of Gas is that it determines the number of transactions that can be included in a block. So increasing the limit block-by-block, allows the increase of the network capacity, making it faster. That has been precisely the current case. Could this have long-term repercussions?
An increase that could have very negative consequences
The other side of the coin, that is, people unhappy with Ethereum miners for increasing network speed, also expressed their views. The main concern was around possible long-term consequences.
The aforementioned increase could cause the Blockchain network to become too large. As a consequence, it would be difficult and expensive to keep it afloat.
This has been the opinion of important characters in the network, for whom congestion means vulnerability. For example, the developer Péter Szilágyi, considers this act of the Ethereum miners, as a gesture of selfishness, since, for pursuing an immediate benefit, they do not take into account the consequences for the network.
Another of those who spoke was the co-founder himself, Vitalik Buterin. For him, the fact that Ethereum miners increased the Gas limit could be inconvenient. At the same time, he assured that he understood the miners’ point of view.
By increasing the Gas limit, Ethereum miners enjoy lower commissions and this makes the network easier to use. “I spent $ 40 in commissions just to transfer three people”Buterin wrote, making a clear reference to those companies that must transfer high amounts in which they leave tens of thousands of dollars in commissions.
Data to consider
- A 25% increase in the Gas limit has not occurred since September 2019.
- Gas is a unit of measure for the amount of computational effort it takes to execute an operation.
- All operations carried out in the Ethereum network, from transactions to smart contracts, require a certain amount of Gas.
Reliable sources
The information in this content has been extracted from reliable sources detailed below:
* Content professionally managed by the authors of CryptoTendency.
* External sources: Etherscan.io, Ethgas.oi.
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