London upgrade boosts Ethereum blockchain’s capacity by 9%

Following Ethereum’s recent London upgrade, the network’s capacity has increased by about 9%.

And According to Etherscan’s historical average daily gas used chart, Etherum’s average usage in terms of daily gas used has spiked by around 9% since the upgrade went live on Aug 5th. The daily gas used, which indicates the overall capacity of the network, rose from about 92 billion to over 100 billion. This is the most notable change that has occurred since it rose by 17% on April 21.

In an analysis posted on Reddit, the co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin, who earlier hailed the upgrade as a game-changer, gave three reasons why Ethereum’s network capacity climbed after the London upgrade.

Buterin explained that the London upgrade, which delayed the ‘Ethereum Ice Age,’ increased the complexity in the proof-of-work mining algorithm, resulting in longer block run times.

This is a ~3% difference in block speed, which explains 3% out of the 9% increase in on-chain gas usage.

He also suggested that before the London upgrade there was more unused block space since the maximum gas used was set at 15 million. However, this value is now a target rather than a limit following the upgrade.

Lastly, Buterin pointed out that the EIP-1559 formula is not quite perfect in targeting 50% of the base fee to be burned. He ended by saying:

Ethereum users can rejoice in the unintentionally 6% increased capacity that London brought.

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