A new Improvement Proposal (EIP) is emerging among Ethereum developers to help reduce the high costs of commission fees that occur in transactions on the network today.
Since April the cost of transactions in Ethereum increased considerably thanks to the growing user demand for this network. This increase led Ethereum miners to enjoy, on several occasions, better commission rates than those received by Ethereum miners. Bitcoin.
The Ethereum Improvement Proposal called EIP 1559 will allow to establish a commission rate basis for transactions that take place within the network. Through EIP 1559, users will be able to pay a fixed commission to miners for each transaction they make on Ethereum; likewise, users will be able to pay an extra or premium to miners if they wish to better position their transactions.
Even though at present the cost of Ethereum commission fees has not yet reached the historical maximum seen in 2018, the developers consider that the implementation of this proposal is necessary to solve the problems faced by users who run decentralized applications (dApps) on Ethereum. High commission fees make small transactions unfeasible, due to the amount of Gas which must be cancelled by users.
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Ethereum Improvement Proposal – EIP 1559
The improvement proposal presented by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, and the developers Eric Conner, Rick Dudley, Matthew Slipper e Ian Norden The platform seeks to replace the current fee model used by Ethereum with a system that allows the value of said fee to be adjusted to a base cost that will depend on the demand of the network. With this mechanism, the developers claim that users will be able to enjoy a better cost in commission rates, while reducing their complexity and improving their efficiency.
As the document explains, the protocol establishes an adjustment to average the base commission rate at an average of 10 million Gas per blockThis adjustment allows the base fee to be increased or decreased based on network usage at any given time; that is, if Ethereum usage is higher, the base fee will increase, while if usage is lower, then it will be reduced to maintain the average of 10 million Gas. Likewise, the improvement proposal indicates that this increase or reduction in the base fee will have a maximum of ⅛ in each block.
Users will be able to set a premium at their convenience that will help them quickly include their transaction within a block when there is high demand on the network. The developers of EIP 1559 explain that the base commission fee is burned within the network while the gas premium is given to the miners. They also indicate that the Gas limit per block will not be determined by the miners, but rather the protocol itself will make the adjustment based on changes in the network demand.
The problems that EIP 1559 seeks to solve
EIP 1559 states that firstly, current fee rates on Ethereum are extremely volatile; one day, depending on network congestion, fees can cost around 2 gwei and in a short time change to a cost of up to 200 gwei. This volatility creates inefficiencies within the network that unnecessarily affect users. Miners on the network will always choose the highest paying fee rate, forcing other users to match those fees in order to have their transactions included within a block and not have to wait for several blocks for their transaction to be processed.
Therefore, the EIP 1559 improvement proposal proposes a dynamic change in block size based on network demand or congestion that will solve these problems. Thus, firstly, the base commission fee will be burned by the protocol to avoid manipulation by miners to extract more fees from users; something that in turn will contribute to consolidating the value of ETH, by allowing ETH to only be used to pay for transactions within Ethereum. Secondly, user premiums for each transaction will be what rewards miners for their work in extracting blocks within the network. blockchainThis premium is adjusted according to the user's payment capacity and the need to prioritize the confirmation of transactions carried out within the network.
For its part, EIP 1559 proposes that to avoid manipulation of the base commission rate on the network, it will be included as part of the block header structure and will be maintained under consensus by Ethereum's proof-of-work algorithm.
Decisions regarding the proposal
Although to date several of the Ethereum clients are working on the implementation of this improvement proposal as Pegasys, also several other developers come up with new solutions to change the commission fee structure based on the relative needs of the network.
En este sentido, Then finlay, lead developer of Dappradar, presented the proposal for improvement EIP 2593 as an alternative to EIP 1559, with which it is possible to slowly and progressively adjust the commission rate until the miner accepts it to include the transaction within a block.
Continue reading: Ethereum community debates possible increase in Gas per block limit
