Ethereum News
How Ethereum’s Fusaka precompile expansion changes gas economics
Calldata and block limits
The calldata floor cost increased to 64 gas per byte. This change targets data-heavy transactions with minimal EVM computation. Because the floor cost for calldata increased to 64 gas per byte, the maximum possible uncompressed execution payload size for a block dropped from 1.07 MB to 0.67 MB. This change affects the 1.5% of transactions using large data payloads. Regular users performing token transfers or DeFi operations pay the standard 4/16 gas rate. EIP-7825 also caps transactions at 16,777,216 gas. This prevents a single transaction from monopolizing a block. The default block gas limit is now 60 million. This value follows devnet testing that targeted 60 million under stress.
New limits exist.
Cryptographic math adjustments
Math costs changed. EIP-7883 raised the minimum MODEXP charge from 200 to 500 gas. It also removed the one-third discount from EIP-2565. If an exponent exceeds 256 bits, the gas charge rises faster for each extra byte. Large base or modulus inputs also trigger higher costs. If the base or modulus is bigger than 32 bytes, the cost rises in proportion to its size. Developers identified MODEXP as an obstacle to increasing the block gas limit. Current gas pricing often underestimates the computing power certain inputs require. One transaction using MODEXP could take up most of the time needed to process an entire block. EIP-7823 limits MODEXP inputs to 8192 bits. This prevents DoS attacks using massive numbers. EIP-7939 adds the CLZ opcode. It counts leading zeros in a 256-bit value. This replaces expensive bit-looping logic in Solidity. EIP-7951 introduces a precompile for the secp256r1 curve. This precompile performs ECDSA signature verification. If the signature is invalid, the precompile returns 0x00. This precompile uses 160 bytes of input. Developers must check the return value to ensure it is 0x01. The input must contain 32 bytes for the message hash, 32 bytes for r, 32 bytes for s, 32 bytes for the x-coordinate, and 32 bytes for the y-coordinate. The secp256r1 curve uses the same cryptography found in WebAuthn and FIDO2.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Max MODEXP input | 8192 bits |
| Min MODEXP charge | 500 gas |
| Max transaction gas | 16,777,216 |
| Default block gas limit | 60,000,000 |
Data availability scaling
PeerDAS expands capacity. EIP-7594 allows nodes to hold only a portion of blob data. This expands blob capacity by 8x. The network uses 128 subnets. A validator with 32 ETH participates in 8 subnets. This reduces bandwidth requirements. A validator needs 16KB of bandwidth per blob. This is an 8x reduction compared to previous requirements. PeerDAS uses Reed-Solomon encoding to ensure data is recoverable. The network divides into 128 subnets. Each subnet stores a fragment of the overall blob data. If a person secures 64 of the 128 pieces, they can fully restore the original blob. EIP-7918 ensures blob fees stay above a reserve price. This prevents the fee market from collapsing when execution gas dominates. The block size limit is 10 MiB. This includes a 2 MiB safety margin. The block size cap is separate from the gas limit. L2s can post larger batches of transactions at lower cost. This allows for higher throughput and cheaper user fees. Can the network scale without sacrificing decentralization?
