Ethereum to Increase Limits in 2026

Vitalik Buterin has announced that following the December Fusaka upgrade, Ethereum is preparing another round of improvements for 2026. These updates will focus on several key areas, with one of the main goals being a fivefold increase to the gas limit. This change would allow significantly more transactions to fit into each block, improving network throughput and helping keep fees low for layer-two solutions.

However, Buterin emphasized that operations that heavily strain the network will become more expensive. This is meant to prevent nodes from being forced to store excessive amounts of data.

The current gas limit is 60 million per block—double what it was a year earlier. In 2025, the Pectra upgrade improved validator performance, streamlined layer-two operations, and made wallet usage more user-friendly. The upcoming Fusaka update, scheduled for December, aims to further raise block limits, reduce node load, and lower costs for users.

The major motivation behind this push for aggressive scaling is competition with Solana. While Ethereum remains the more decentralized and battle-tested platform, Solana gained popularity thanks to its extremely low fees and fast transactions. For a long time, a typical Ethereum transaction cost around $10, while on Solana it was just a few cents.

This gap has started to narrow. In 2024, the average Ethereum fee dropped to about $5, and by 2025—thanks to Pectra and other upgrades—it fell below $1. Currently, a transaction costs around $0.31. For comparison, on Solana the fee is about $0.0022. The improvements planned for 2026 may narrow this difference even further.