The EIP 1559 is a welcome move for Ethereum users that standardize the transaction fee across the network and reduces volatility. However, mining pools have placed a strong opposition to it.
As per the latest development, July 2021 is the scheduled period when the Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 1559 will go live. As per Ethereum’s core developers’ call on Friday, March 5th, five other EIPs along with EIP 1559 are likely to join the London hard fork.
The Ethereum fraternity has been eagerly awaiting the launch of EIP 1559 amind issues of the transaction fee. The ongoing EIP 1559 helps to lower the volatility of transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain. Besides, it also fixes several ongoing issues with Ethereum’s user experience.
Traditionally, a user sends the gas fee to the miner to include the transaction in the block. However, with the EIP 1559 implementation, the gas fee shall go to the network itself in the form of “burn”. The “burn” is also dubbed as basefee with only an optional tip paid to the miners.
The Ethereum algorithm sets the “burn” fee thereby making it easier for users to pay a fair price. Thus, EIP 1559 replaces the supply/demand auction-style system with a standard rate implementation across the entire network. Ethereum creators are confident that the proposal will be “positive ono the long term price” of Ethereum. They say that a lower and predictable gas fee ensures that Ethereum isn’t only for the rich.
This new proposal has received solid support from users and the creators of Ethereum. However, it has garnered strong opposition from the miners and the mining pools who have been on the receiving end.
ETH Miners Place a Solid Opposition
Ethereum miners have enjoyed solid revenues recently on the backdrop of the high DeFi activity on the Ethereum blockchain. In February last month, the total mining revenue clocked a massive $1.3 billion with the average transaction fee striking an all-time high of over $37. As per data by CoinMetrics, 50% of the revenue came from fees alone.
The surge in transaction fees and the ETH price has shot up the network has power to more than 100% in a year’s time. Flexpool, a minority mining pool, has launched a marketing campaign against the EIP. It has also received support from majority pools like sparkPool and Ethermine.
Nearly 60% of the Ethereum hash power is currently against the implementation of the new proposal. Interestingly, F2Pool is the only largest pool in favor of the EIP with 10% hash power.
However, mining pools have few options to stop the EIP 1559 implementation. The bigger danger that currently hovers around is the 51% attack on the Ethereum network. However, the chances of this remain unlikely at this moment considering different financial incentives for not attacking the network.
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