Vitalik Buterin Proposes Gas Cap to Strengthen Ethereum Security and Stability

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and researcher Toni Wahrstätter have put forward a new proposal, EIP-7983, which tries to cap the gas usage per transaction at 16.77 million units. The proposal is proposed to make Ethereum more robust against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, increase stability, and enable higher compatibility with zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs).

Why Ethereum Needs a Gas Cap

With Ethereum’s current configuration, one transaction may exhaust the entire block’s gas limit. This makes it a vulnerability wherein one high-demand transaction can jeopardize the network by tying up resources, raising DoS vulnerability and uncertainty.

The proposed EIP-7983 attempts to do this by setting a hard cap of 16.77 million gas (2²⁴) per transaction. “By doing so, Ethereum can raise its resistance to some DoS vectors,” the proposal states.

Impact on zkVMs and Network Efficiency

The proposed limit is not just a security issue—it’s an issue of licensing as well. EIP-7983 will contribute to increasing Ethereum’s compatibility with zkVMs by encouraging developers to split large transactions into small, manageable transactions.

Transactions requesting gas over the 16.77 million limit would be rejected at the block validation level so they would never even get onto the network. This measure operates independently of the block-level gas maximum, which remains variable at the hands of validators.

Balancing Innovation and Security

Buterin and Wahrstätter point out that 16.77 million is a conscious choice of a limit that can serve most current decentralized finance (DeFi) and contract deployment applications with the additional aim of reducing unnecessary risk.

While not backward compatible for addresses above the cap, the vast majority of existing Ethereum transactions are already below the threshold, avoiding excessive disruption.

EIP-7983 is the culmination of earlier work like EIP-7825, aiming to make Ethereum handling of transactions more predictable and friendlier to users.

Simplifying Ethereum’s Future

This concept is one of Buterin’s larger plans to simplify Ethereum. In May, he argued in favor of a simplified protocol on the lines of Bitcoin’s minimalism to make it more efficient, secure, and easier to use. His five-year plan involves simplifying Ethereum’s execution, consensus, and shared pieces.

Alongside, Buterin is exploring new ideas such as “pluralistic identity,” a digital identity system that strives to maintain privacy while enabling equal online engagement.