Ethereum’s scalability received a significant enhancement on Wednesday with the implementation of the second Blob Parameter-Only hard fork, increasing the blob limit from 15 to 21. This is the first of several advancements targeting the scaling of the Ethereum ecosystem by 2026.
The second BPO hard fork, effective Wednesday at 1:01:11 UTC, further boosts Ethereum’s data capacity by allowing a greater number of transactions to be aggregated via rollups.
Additionally, the BPO hard fork elevated the blob target from 10 to 14, a crucial metric to monitor, as frequently nearing the 21-blob cap may strain node bandwidth and storage capabilities.
Each blob unit accommodates 128 kilobytes of data, allowing Ethereum to now store up to 2,688 KB within a single block.
Blobs help maintain Ethereum mainnet stability
While blobs enhance transaction capacity on Ethereum layer 2s, they also contribute to stabilizing gas fees on the Ethereum mainnet by alleviating network congestion.
YCharts data indicates that Ethereum transaction fees have been significantly more stable since the first BPO hard fork on Dec. 9, 2025.
Gas limit increase also under consideration
During the Ethereum All Core Developers meeting on Dec. 15, participants also broached the subject of increasing the network gas limit from 60 million to 80 million following the implementation of the second BPO hard fork.
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This adjustment would directly enhance the number of transactions and smart contract operations that can be accommodated within each Ethereum block, further elevating overall throughput and potentially reducing fees.
Glamsterdam hard fork also aims at scalability
Later in 2026, the Glamsterdam hard fork will enable the gas limit to increase to 200 million and introduce “perfect parallel processing.”
Perfect parallel processing will become achievable on Ethereum through Block Access Lists under Ethereum Improvement Proposal-7928, which aims to transform Ethereum’s single-lane transaction processing mode into a multi-lane highway, significantly enhancing transaction throughput.
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