On Wednesday, Ethereum’s scalability was enhanced with a second Blob parameter-only hard fork, increasing the blob limit from 15 to 21. This is the first of many improvements aimed at scaling the Ethereum ecosystem in 2026.
The second BPO hard fork, which took effect on Wednesday at 1:01:11 UTC, further increases Ethereum’s data throughput by allowing more transactions to be batched via rollups.
The BPO hard fork also increased the blob goal from 10 to 14. This is widely recognized as a more important metric to monitor, as approaching the 21 blob limit at any given time can overload a node’s bandwidth and storage.
One BLOB unit fits 128 kilobytes of data. This means that Ethereum can store up to 2,688 KB in a single block.
sauce: terrence chan
BLOBs help keep Ethereum mainnet stable
While BLOBs improve transaction throughput on Ethereum Layer 2, they also help stabilize gas fees on Ethereum mainnet by reducing network congestion.
YCharts data shows that Ethereum transaction fees have been much more stable since the first BPO hard fork on December 9, 2025.
Changes in Ethereum fees over the past 12 months. sauce: Y chart
Gas limits raised on radar
Participants at the Ethereum All Core Developers Conference on December 15 also discussed the idea of increasing the network gas limit from 60 million to 80 million once the second BPO hard fork is implemented.
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Doing so would directly increase the number of transactions and smart contract operations that fit into each Ethereum block, further increasing overall throughput and potentially reducing fees at the same time.
Gramsterdam hard fork also focuses on scalability
In late 2026, the Gramsterdam hard fork will increase gas limits up to 200 million and introduce “full parallelism.”
Full parallelism is now possible on Ethereum through block access lists based on Ethereum Improvement Proposal-7928. It aims to transform Ethereum’s single-lane mode of transaction processing into a multi-lane highway, further increasing transaction throughput.
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