August 30th, 2021 | Updated on March 7th, 2022
The term gas limit is used in two different ways in Ethereum. There’s limit for the total gas that can be spent on the transactions contained within a block. Limiting the gas consumed in each block helps manage the growth of the Ethereum blockchain and the cost of operating a miner or node.
Miners collectively have the ability to increase or decrease Ethereum’s block gas limit within a certain range. Theoretically, raising the limit would allow the Ethereum network to process more transactions per second. So when transactions start to pile up, you’ll often hear discussion about miners signaling for higher gas limits.
