Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has introduced a series of proposals aimed at reinforcing the network’s long-term stability and decentralization. Speaking at the Ethereum Community Conference in Cannes, Buterin emphasized the need for Ethereum and the broader crypto industry to adopt more practical, user-focused safeguards. Among these, he co-authored a new technical proposal, Ethereum Improvement Proposal 7983 (EIP-7983), which would place a protocol-level cap on gas usage per transaction to enhance security and future technology compatibility.
Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter unveiled EIP-7983, which proposes a hard gas limit of 16.77 million units (2²⁴) per transaction. This cap aims to reduce Ethereum’s vulnerability to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks by preventing single transactions from consuming excessive gas resources that could destabilize the network.
Currently, Ethereum’s architecture permits individual transactions to use up the entire block gas limit, creating risks such as failed transactions and inconsistent block processing. By enforcing a per-transaction gas ceiling, EIP-7983 intends to distribute gas usage more evenly, ensuring smoother network performance and preventing bottlenecks caused by gas-heavy operations.
“By implementing this limit, Ethereum can enhance its resilience against certain DoS vectors, improve network stability, and provide more predictability to transaction processing costs,” the proposal states.
Beyond security, the proposed gas cap also supports Ethereum’s compatibility with zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs). zkVMs are emerging as crucial tools for scaling and privacy, but they currently struggle with processing very large transactions due to their design that breaks computations into smaller proofs.
EIP-7983 encourages developers to divide gas-intensive operations into smaller, modular transactions, making Ethereum more accommodating to zkVM architectures. This compatibility boost could accelerate zkVM adoption, further enhancing Ethereum’s scalability and privacy features.
The proposal notes that most Ethereum transactions today operate well below the 16.77 million gas threshold, meaning typical users and developers would see little to no disruption. However, transactions that exceed this cap would be rejected outright during block validation, enforcing the new limit strictly.
It’s important to note that this per-transaction gas cap is separate from the overall block gas limit, which remains under the control of validators and miners as part of consensus rules.
EIP-7983 follows previous initiatives like EIP-7825, which aimed to improve transaction execution predictability. These efforts align with Vitalik Buterin’s broader push for simplifying Ethereum’s base-layer architecture. In a May blog post, Buterin expressed concerns that Ethereum’s growing complexity was causing development slowdowns and security risks. Drawing inspiration from Bitcoin’s minimalist approach, he outlined a vision to restructure Ethereum’s consensus, execution, and shared layers to create a leaner, more robust protocol over the coming five years.
Buterin’s vision extends beyond gas mechanics. He has recently proposed ideas such as partially stateless nodes to improve scalability and a digital identity framework called “pluralistic identity,” aimed at balancing privacy with verifiable user participation.
The overarching goal is clear: to keep Ethereum adaptable, scalable, and secure while reducing systemic vulnerabilities and enhancing usability.
Whether EIP-7983 will gain enough support to be included in a future hard fork remains uncertain. However, with Ethereum’s ecosystem growing ever more complex and DoS threats persisting, this proposal highlights the ongoing need to strengthen the network’s resilience and efficiency for a decentralized future.
July 2025, Cryptoniteuae