Vitalik Buterin and Toni Wahrstätter recently introduced Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7983 to accomplish this. This proposal’s goal is to introduce a protocol-level cap on transaction gas usage. Through this proposal, we hope to achieve increased network security, improved performance, and greater predictability in the execution of transactions. This initiative continues the work of other efforts like EIP-7825, continuing to advance the ongoing efforts to make Ethereum a more energy efficient network.

Under EIP-7983, any transaction that sets a gas limit greater than 16.77 million will be rejected. To put it simply, this will occur when validating a block. This prevents them from being included in the network and subsequently added to new blocks.

Rationale Behind the Gas Cap

16.77 million was chosen as the gas cap value because it was a practical choice that provided adequate performance with limited complexity.

This value enables most current use cases including contract deployments and advanced DeFi interactions while ensuring consistent performance characteristics. - proposal

This cap is meant to be permissive of existing advanced decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases and novel contract deployments. By creating an upper limit to consumption, the proposal’s goal is to ensure gas use is spread more equally across the network.

Impact on Network Efficiency and Security

EIP-7983 will drastically decrease the likelihood that a single transaction will fill up block capacity. In particular, the proposal improves compatibility with zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs). Further, it promotes the practice of splintering big transactions into smaller, less complicated pieces.

By implementing this limit, Ethereum can enhance its resilience against certain DoS vectors, improve network stability, and provide more predictability to transaction processing costs. - proposal

The new gas cap is intended to help keep the Ethereum network more secure and stable.

Looking Ahead

Vitalik Buterin's work on EIP-7983 is part of a broader effort to enhance Ethereum's efficiency, security, and accessibility. We’re glad to see the proposal was taking this proactive step to strengthen the network’s robustness and reliability. It accommodates the increasing complexity of the applications and users as the network matures.