Ethereum

new research from @paradigm: How to Raise the Gas Limit ⛽⛽

lots of people want to raise the gas limit, but so far most of the discourse has lacked detailed quantitative evidence.

that ends today. we are making the scientific case for scaling Ethereum using ultra-high-res data

A research-driven technology investment firm. https://paradigm.xyz

read full post or keep reading below for the key takeaways

data @ paradigm

https://github.com/sslivkoff

read full post or keep reading below for the key takeaways

https://www.paradigm.xyz/2024/03/how-to-raise-the-gas-limit-1

gameplan:

the gas limit touches all aspects of Ethereum scaling. this is too much to tackle all at once

so we break the topic into multiple parts:
- part 1 = state growth
- part 2 = history growth
- part 3 = state accesss
- part 4 = gas limit

today is part 1

we start with state growth

many ppl say that state growth is the main bottleneck for scaling Ethereum

but it’s often unclear what is meant by this claim
- how much state growth is happening?
- what amount of state growth is ok?
- what do you even mean by “state growth”?

🤔🤔🤔

for Ethereum to reach global scale, we need data-driven answers to all of these questions

in today's article we quantify the total amount of state held by each Ethereum contract and categorize the contracts hierarchically

visualizing this hierarchy shows how much of Ethereum’s state is used by different categories like tokens, infrastructure, games, and defi

you can learn a lot about Ethereum by staring at this graph

for example a huge portion of state is dormant, taken up by dead protocols

also, the majority of state is occupied by user token balances

the chart is interactive in the article

you should click around and see if you can find your favorite protocols

paradigm.xyz//2024/03/how-to-raise-the-gas-limit-1

we can also look at how state growth rates have been evolving over time

surprisingly, state growth is currently the lowest it’s been since 2021. this is mostly due to a decline in nft activity (double click the legend to zoom)

from these state growth rates we can project how much “state growth runway” is left for Ethereum nodes using modern consumer hardware

it turns out that current hardware can sustain these state growth rates for at least a decade

from this result, alongside upcoming improvements to Ethereum’s architecture, we do not expect state growth to be a significant bottleneck for Ethereum scaling in the short, medium, or long term

however, state growth is NOT the only bottleneck that limits scaling Ethereum

each bottleneck must be analyzed according to its own particular hardware constraints

we intend to do just that in future work

we have significantly more data to share in the coming weeks

if you are excited about research in Ethereum scaling, reach out to me or georgios. we’d love to hear about how you are thinking about the problem and potentially collaborate

we received a ton of helpful feedback while writing this post

major thank you to @tim @karalabe.eth Guillaume Ballet @banteg @ralexstokes @jessepollak @toniw.eth @patrickogrady @lightclient @ansgar.eth @frankieislost @danrobinson @matthuang Doug Feagin