Ethereum Set for Major Security Upgrade as Vitalik Buterin Proposes Gas Limit Rule

• Vitalik Buterin has proposed introducing a new cap on gas limits, aiming to enhance the network’s overall security and efficiency.
•  The proposal is in the draft stage and open for community feedback on GitHub, where it’s expected to go through further refinements. 

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, together with Toni Wahrstätter, a researcher at the Applied Research Group (ARG) of the Ethereum Foundation, has introduced a network upgrade through Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7983.

The idea is to set a hard limit on the gas a single transaction can use, capping it at 16,777,216 gas units (or 2²⁴). According to Buterin and Wahrstätter, this threshold is high enough to support even the most advanced DeFi applications and contract deployments, while still keeping the network safe from excessive resource consumption.

The proposed cap marks a major reduction, nearly 50% lower than the 30 million gas limit outlined in a previous proposal, EIP-7825. While there was broad support from the developer community for limiting gas usage to improve performance and reliability, many had concerns about the higher cap and leaned toward a more conservative figure for better efficiency and tighter security.

Currently, EIP-7983 is still in draft form and open for public discussion on GitHub. It’s expected to go through further tweaks and refinements based on community feedback before any formal implementation.

Why the New Gas Cap Matters

Today, Ethereum doesn’t place a strict upper limit on how much gas a single transaction can consume, meaning one large transaction could, in theory, hog an entire block. As reported by CNF, this creates a potential attack vector, especially for DoS exploits. EIP-7983  will solve this problem by introducing a protocol-level limit.

If a transaction goes beyond the cap, it’s immediately rejected, either before entering the mempool or during block validation.

It’s not just about defense. Capping gas per transaction also helps make the network more predictable and stable. Doing this will make sure there is a fairer distribution of resources in each block and improve performance for Layer 2 rollups, Ethereum’s scaling solutions that bundle many transactions together. The result will be faster execution, fewer bottlenecks, and a smoother experience for everyone involved.

The proposal also fits neatly into Ethereum’s vision of becoming more modular and zk-friendly. Smaller, split-up transactions are easier to handle and more compatible with zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs), which rely on concurrency and fast proof generation. In other words, it’s a technical shift that aligns well with where Ethereum is heading.

If you’re a regular Ethereum user, sending tokens, trading on DeFi platforms, or interacting with contracts, this change won’t affect you at all. Most of those actions already use far less gas than the new cap allows.

For developers, especially those deploying large smart contracts, the cap might require some adjustments. Bigger contracts may need to be broken into smaller modules to stay under the limit.

But for the vast majority of projects, the impact should be minimal. ETH has climbed 2.68% over the past 24 hours, reaching $2,622. What stands out is that this price rally comes despite a 7.9% drop in daily trading volume, which now sits at $17 billion.