Constitutional proposal

Updated 10 November 2025: This proposal has been amended to include an increase in the L2 min base fee from 0.01 gwei to 0.02 gwei. This change is proposed to be executed by an ArbOwner precompile call to the setMinimumL2BaseFee function and will solely be a parameter/configuration change.

Abstract

This AIP proposes to reduce the severity, frequency, and duration of high L2 gas prices during periods when demand exceeds the gas target by introducing a new set of gas targets and new, accompanying adjustment windows for Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova. The starting effective (lowest) gas target of the chain is proposed to be 10 Mgas/s with an adjustment period of 86,400 seconds (1 day). These changes are intended to replace the current 7 Mgas/s gas target, which is used to adjust the L2 gas price using an EIP-1559-inspired algorithm relative to the current 102-second adjustment window.

The AIP requests that the ArbitrumDAO grant Offchain Labs the right (for 2-years, measured from this proposal’s mainnet activation) to add up to 10 gas targets and adjustment windows, and to modify them over time—up to 100 Mgas/s and 86,400s, respectively. These changes will be introduced gradually to protect network stability while addressing high gas price volatility. The rollout begins with 6 new gas targets, each paired with its own adjustment window.

Lastly, this AIP is accompanied by an increase in the minimum L2 base fee from 0.01 gwei/gas to 0.02 gwei/gas to help reduce spam and offset any potential decline in the portion of L2 surplus fee-derived transaction fees (during periods of peak demand) to the ArbitrumDAO.

These updates and delegated rights are proposed by Offchain Labs in its role as an Arbitrum Aligned Entity (AAE), as described in A Vision for the Future of Arbitrum. Offchain Labs serves as an AAE for engineering, product, business development, and technical research.

All changes will be gated through smart contracts and DAO votes. Activation will require an on-chain vote, a security audit, and deployment of a new Resource Constraint Manager contract to manage permissions. If approved, only Offchain Labs will be authorized to adjust the parameters within the approved limits.

The proposal also outlines the rationale, risks, tradeoffs, and supporting data behind these changes. It applies solely to ArbitrumDAO-owned chains—Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova.

Rationale

How gas costs are priced today

Arbitrum chains determine transaction gas fees using two components:

1. L1 gas costs – the expense of posting data to the parent chain.

2. L2 gas costs – the resources consumed on the child chain (computation and storage).

L1 gas costs depend on the price of calldata or blobs on the parent chain, while L2 gas costs depend on network demand. Today, when demand on Arbitrum One exceeds 7 MGas/s, the L2 base fee increases exponentially — using a mechanism similar to Ethereum’s EIP-1559 — until demand falls back toward the gas target over a 102-second adjustment window. Learn more about Arbitrum’s gas model here.

Negative impacts of elevated demand

During periods of high activity, L2 gas prices can rise sharply, which significantly increases transaction costs for users and developers. For example, on Oct. 10, 2025, Arbitrum One’s L2 gas price peaked at an average of 41 gwei/gas, resulting in roughly $9.49 in L2 gas costs to transfer an ERC-20 token (source, and assumes 60,000 gas and a price of $3,855 per Ether).

These high L2 gas price spikes are the motivation behind this AIP: to mitigate the frequency and severity of congestion-driven cost increases. Notably, introducing multiple gas targets with overlapping adjustment windows has a greater combined effect on stabilizing prices than raising a single gas target or changing a single adjustment window alone.

Illustrative example

To illustrate this, we analyzed how the L2 gas price would have changed during the demand surge on Oct. 10, 2025 and on Sept 22, 2025, under different gas targets and adjustment windows. The adjustment window is a time-based damping parameter that controls how slowly the L2 gas price responds to changes in demand on the network above the gas target. A larger adjustment window results in slower price adjustments relative to the gas target, while a smaller adjustment window results in faster price adjustments.

Figure 1: L2 gas prices calculated different pricing algorithms during a period of high congestion on Sept 22, 2025

Figure 2: L2 gas prices from different pricing algorithms during a period of high congestion on Oct 10, 2025

Below is a brief description of the colored lines and what they represent in each of the two figures above, while holding the minimum L2 base fee constant

• Red lines: Actual L2 gas price using today’s parameters (effective gas target of 7 MGas/s over a 102-second adjustment window), peaking near 4 gwei on Sept 22 (Figure 1) and 42 gwei on Oct 10 (Figure 2).

• Blue lines: L2 prices using the new set of proposed gas targets and adjustment windows, with an effective 7 MGas/s target and 86,400-second window.

• Green lines: L2 prices using the new set of proposed gas targets and adjustment windows, with an effective 10 MGas/s target and 86,400-second window.

Looking specifically at Figure 2 during the period of peak demand on October 10, 2025, notice how both the green and the blue lines produce a much lower L2 gas price of ~9 gwei during the same demand peak, representing a ~33 gwei difference when compared to the peak of the red line (which uses today’s single 7 Mgas/s gas target and 102-second adjustment window). The difference between the peaks is almost ~33 gwei (129% difference) despite the effective gas targets being very close. Both the green and blue lines show substantially lower peak prices — around 9 gwei — a 33 gwei (≈129%) reduction compared to the current configuration, despite similar effective gas targets.

Summary and the increase in the minimum L2 base fee

This retrospective analysis shows that applying the proposed gas targets and adjustment windows would have significantly reduced L2 gas prices during the periods of peak demand on Sept 22, 2025 and Oct. 10, 2025. While this simulation does not predict future outcomes, it demonstrates that longer and overlapping adjustment windows can meaningfully dampen gas price volatility during periods of high demand.

Naturally, this change will mean that during periods of peak demand, the portion of L2 surplus fee-derived transaction fees collected by the ArbitrumDAO will be lower going forward, compared to before. To offset this potential decline, this proposal is to be accompanied by a slight increase in the minimum L2 base fee from 0.01 gwei/gas to 0.02 gwei/gas. This slight increase in the minimum L2 base fee can also positively contribute to reducing spam on the network as well, since the base fee for all transactions will be slightly larger than before this change.

Specifications

New gas targets and adjustment windows

This proposal replaces the current, singular gas target (7 Mgas/s over a 102-second adjustment window) with multiple gas targets across overlapping adjustment windows, as tabulated in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Proposed gas targets & accompanying adjustment windows

| Gas Target (Mgas/s) | Adjustment window (seconds) | |---------------------|-----------------------------| | 60 | 9 | | 41 | 52 | | 29 | 329 | | 20 | 2,105 | | 14 | 13,485 | | 10 | 86,400 |

These values were calculated using this model here, with inputs from internal benchmarking on a server hosted by a cloud provider. This model assumes that a node on the reference hardware can sustainably sync at 80 MGas/s and that the chain can tolerate a 20% increase in L2 gas price per second during periods of high demand. Reference hardware used for these tests was: 64 GB RAM, 8 CPUs (x86 architecture), and a locally attached NVMe drive (for AWS, i4i.2xlarge). Note that the lowest gas target of the 6 being introduce

... please visit link below to view full proposal

https://snapshot.org/#/arbitrumfoundation.eth/proposal/0x4a96a91d162975de0d402b83ca8b8a24e808ca357150120fc0d44ae0bf1cc4a5