Ethereum Pushes Bold Scaling and Governance Moves

Major Network Upgrade Proposals and Leadership Reshuffle Mark Pivotal April for Ethereum

Ethereum’s ecosystem is moving through a critical transformation as researcher Dankrad Feist, a key contributor to Danksharding, proposed a dramatic 100-fold increase to the network’s gas limit. Currently hovering around 36 million gas, the proposed adjustment would push it to approximately 3.6 billion gas, aiming to elevate Ethereum’s transaction throughput to around 2,000 transactions per second. 

Feist, citing advances in client performance and network infrastructure maturity, stated, “We now have the engineering and research capabilities to safely expand Ethereum’s capacity significantly.” While the scaling initiative is intended to complement Layer-2 solutions and sharding efforts, not replace them, some community members voiced concerns about the potential centralization risks associated with the higher hardware demands the upgrade would impose.

Parallel to scaling discussions, a new fee structure targeting the application layer has been proposed by Ethereum community members. This initiative seeks to decouple application-level fees from core protocol gas fees, introducing a "marketplace for app-layer fees" where developers could set their own pricing models independently. 

By enabling applications to specify preferred gas models without altering the base layer’s consensus-driven gas auction, the proposal aims to mitigate the volatile experience of developers and users who suffer from unpredictable gas prices. Advocates believe this could streamline onboarding for new developers and enhance performance predictability for decentralized applications, though some critics caution that it could add complexity to fee dynamics and introduce risks of congestion in ways not fully understood.

Meanwhile, Ethereum's Fusaka hard fork, scheduled for the third or fourth quarter of 2025, has been finalized with notable changes. Although originally intended to introduce the EVM Object Format (EOF)—a standardized framework for deploying and executing smart contracts to improve security and execution efficiency—strong opposition from developers and community members has delayed its inclusion. Many critics argued that EOF's complexity and incomplete audits posed too great a risk during a critical period for smart contract adoption. 

As a result, the Fusaka upgrade will focus instead on other scalability and efficiency enhancements, pushing EOF’s potential rollout to a future post-Fusaka fork. Testing and final reviews for Fusaka’s updated features continue through the second quarter, with mainnet deployment expected between September and October 2025, while the separate Pectra Upgrade remains on track for release on May 7, 2025.

Adding to a wave of change, Vitalik Buterin announced sweeping updates to the Ethereum Foundation’s leadership and governance structure. New executive directors have been appointed, including several well-known figures from the cypherpunk community, reinforcing Ethereum’s foundational commitment to decentralization and privacy. 

This leadership reshuffle brings a heavier focus on transparency and public accountability, with the board now favoring technical experts and community-driven figures over corporate-linked appointments. Buterin emphasized the importance of preserving Ethereum’s original ethos, declaring, “We must stay true to Ethereum’s core values as we scale to global relevance.” The developments mark a defining moment for the Ethereum ecosystem as it navigates increasing global attention and technological pressure.

This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.