How Does the EVM’s Gas Limit System Work?

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) gas limit system works by requiring every operation (opcode) to consume a fixed amount of 'gas,' which is a unit of computational effort. A transaction must specify a gas limit, which is the maximum gas the sender is willing to pay.

If the transaction runs out of gas before completing, all state changes are reverted, and the sender pays for the gas consumed up to that point. The system prevents infinite loops and ensures that resources are priced, making denial-of-service attacks prohibitively expensive.