Big things might be coming to Ethereum. Dankrad Feist, a researcher with the Ethereum Foundation, just shared a proposal called EIP-9698 — and if it works out, Ethereum could process up to 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) in a few years.
That’s a huge improvement compared to what we’re dealing with today.
So, what’s the deal?
Right now, Ethereum handles about 14 to 20 transactions per second on average.
Even at its best, it could theoretically hit around 119 TPS, but honestly, that’s pretty rare.
Meanwhile, newer blockchains like Solana are cruising with 800 to 1,000 TPS, and in theory, Solana can go all the way up to 65,000 TPS. No wonder people love it for fast NFT drops and DeFi trading.
If you’ve ever tried to buy an NFT on Ethereum when things were busy, you know the struggle — gas fees shooting up to $100 or more just to send a transaction. It’s frustrating.
What’s EIP-9698 trying to do?
Feist’s idea is simple on paper: increase Ethereum’s gas limit — by a lot.
Right now, the gas limit is about 36 million. He wants to push it to 3.6 billion (yes, billion) over the next four years.
Gas limit, if you’re wondering, is basically how much “work” a block can handle. More gas = more transactions packed into each block = faster and cheaper transactions.
Instead of leaving it up to miners and node operators to vote every now and then (which takes forever and sometimes doesn’t even happen), Feist wants a steady, automatic increase over time.
The gas limit would tick up little by little at every “epoch” (basically, a checkpoint every few minutes). And over two years, it would go up by 10x, then another 10x over the next two years.
Sounds good… but any risks?
Sure, there are a few.
The biggest worry is that older or weaker computers running Ethereum nodes might struggle if the network gets a lot heavier. If they can’t keep up, they might drop off — and that’s not ideal.
But the plan is pretty gentle. It’s not like the gas limit will explode overnight. Plus, operators still have plenty of time to upgrade their setups if needed.
Also, nothing is being forced here. If someone doesn’t want to follow the new default behavior, they can change their settings manually.
Why it actually matters
Ethereum’s been the leader for years, but it’s no secret that it struggles with speed and high fees.
We’ve seen it before — during the CryptoKitties craze in 2017, Ethereum basically got clogged up. Same thing happened during the NFT boom in 2021, with some users paying over $500 just to mint a popular NFT.
Meanwhile, Solana and other newer chains showed what it’s like to have fast, cheap transactions.
If this upgrade (plus others like the upcoming Pectra update) go well, Ethereum could close that gap — without sacrificing the security and decentralization it’s known for.
Pectra, by the way, will bring improvements like:
- Better support for Layer 2 rollups
- Lower gas fees
- Easier validator upgrades
- Smarter data storage
In short: Ethereum is gearing up for the future — not with some overnight fix, but with steady, planned upgrades that could make a huge difference over time.
