Design

What happens if the desired gas limit is an "unsafe" number?

Don’t worry, EGL is built to adjust the gas limit gradually.

While you can vote for a gas limit of +/- 4 million from the current gas limit, each week the new desired gas limit can move at most +/- 1 million from the current limit gas limit. This gradual change allows the ecosystem to safely discover what the “right” number is.

Additionally, miners can only increase / decrease a block by 0.1% from the prior block, further allowing the ecosystem to discover if the desired gas limit is safe.

Who are EGL Signals?

"EGL Signals" was created to help signal and guide the community on the desired gas limit. This group is made up of client teams (those who make the software nodes run on), those who've submitted updates (EIPs) that have been approved and implemented, as well as a handful of researchers and contributors. Those in this group have informed insights about what may be the right gas limit. We encourage voters to let how the Signals vote inform their own voting decisions. "EGL Signals" was created to help signal and guide the community on the desired gas limit. This group is made up of client teams (those who make the software nodes run on), those who've submitted updates (EIPs) that have been approved and implemented, as well as a handful of researchers and contributors. Those in this group have informed insights about what may be the right gas limit. We encourage voters to let how the Signals vote inform their own voting decisions.

Why would miners listen to EGL voters?

EGL incentivizes miners to listen to voters by rewarding them in EGLs for doing so.

What happens if miners stop listening to EGL?

Miners are only rewarded with EGLs if they follow the vote. Thus, if miners stop listening to EGL and forgo such a reward, this likely signals that the new desired gas limit was at an unsafe level. In such an event, EGL holders ought to vote back towards the last level miners followed. This will allows miners to claim the EGL reward and allow the EGL community to hold the gas limit at such a level (remember, if no vote passes then the system automatically lowers the desired gas limit to 95% of the current gas limit).

Why limit the vote to 4M?

EGL is built to adjust the gas limit gradually. In a perfect world EGL holders would vote each week, the miners would listen, and the next week's vote would reflect those learnings. In reality, it might take several weeks before the effect of a gas limit change becomes apparent, and some EGL holders may not be watching the network that vigilantly. Having a 4M range to vote balances these two variables.

At what desired gas limit does EGL launch?

The current gas limit (~15M).

What's to stop community members from freeloading; i.e. simply benefitting from others' voting without voting themselves?

EGL has designed a two-part solution to this problem: A certain threshold of votes must be hit each week, and this threshold will gradually increase over time. If the threshold isn't met, the desired gas limit will be set to 95% of the current gas limit each week that threshold isn't met, addressing the tragedy of the commons problem by incentivizing all community members to vote.