Regarding Base transaction fees: they are high because the chain is at its target capacity (2x the throughput of the L1), but demand has increased dramatically. Data fees remain insignificant thanks to EIP-4844 blobs which are still far from capacity!  So while "it could be worse..." what can make it better? (cont)

Eng @ Coinbase, working on Base
https://bayardo.org

Simplest thing would be to just increase the chain's target capacity. I'm pretty confident we could just 2X it right now and the Base sequencer + most node infra would handle it just fine. But "pretty confident" isn't good enough. And it's not just the short term we need to be concerned about. (cont)

Nice thread! What’s the main risk with bumping up the gas limit? Looks like Base can do 6x Ethereum’s gas throughput. Aren’t eth node requirements conservative enough that Base could make large increases in gas limit without worry?

Probably, but all depends on the hardware. We're not sure what kinds of hardware setups RPC providers and such are using for example. We need to benchmark against specific hardware recommendations that we then pass on to partners before getting too crazy.