London Upgrade Delayed Ethereum’s “Ice Age,” Buterin Emphasized
In a Reddit analysis, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin explained why the network’s daily average gas usage jumped from 92 million to nearly 100 million after the London upgrade went live. This rise in daily gas usage was unexpected compared with typical patterns and indicates that the network’s overall capacity has effectively increased.
Buterin identified three main reasons for the increase in Ethereum’s network capacity: 1) the “Ice Age” was postponed, 2) blocks did not fully use the previous 15 million gas cap before London, and 3) small deviations in fee adjustments.
The term “Ethereum’s Ice Age” refers to the gradual difficulty bomb in mining algorithms that would eventually make mining so difficult that block production could stall. Buterin argued that the London upgrade delayed this effect, reducing average block time from 13.5 seconds back to the prior normal of about 13.1 seconds. That change alone translated to about a 2–3% increase in the network’s total capacity.
Before London, 15 million was the maximum gas per block. Many blocks did not consume the full available capacity, leaving roughly 2% of blocks underutilized. After the upgrade, 15 million became the effective target. “This means that if the average gas usage, including empty blocks, is below 15 million, the base fee will be lowered until the average returns to 15 million,” Buterin explained. That adjustment contributed another roughly 2–3% capacity gain.
Finally, Buterin noted that EIP-1559—introduced as part of the London upgrade—creates a subtle interaction between the arithmetic and geometric averages of block sizes and fees. Because EIP-1559’s fee-burning mechanism relies on particular averages, it does not always burn exactly 50% of gas fees. This discrepancy produces a small capacity increase, since blocks end up filled slightly above 50% on average, according to the Ethereum founder.
“For now, Ethereum users can at least enjoy the unintended roughly 6% capacity increase that the London upgrade produced,” Buterin concluded.
The London upgrade launched on August 5, 2021. It was expected to materially change transaction behavior on the Ethereum network by altering miner compensation and the circulating supply of ETH tokens, among other effects.