Ethereum EIP-1559 Proposal Controversy: The Competing Power of the Opposing Party Exceeds 60%, Not the Best Solution
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Are the miners being sacrificed or adding drama to themselves?
Are the miners being sacrificed or adding drama to themselves?
Text | Edited by Peter | Produced by Tong | PANewsThe rise of liquidity mining last year has promoted the vigorous development of the DeFi ecosystem on the Ethereum network. While financial demands such as transactions and lending are increasing, it also caused a sharp increase in Ethereum Gas fees, resulting in more and more network congestion.secondary title
The mining pools stand in their own teams and fight against each other
On February 26, three mining pools released news one after another, expressing their positions on the Ethereum EIP-1559 proposal. The proposal to improve the Ethereum transaction fee mechanism proposed two years ago has already attracted the attention of many Ethereum enthusiasts, and this time the discussion about it is raging again.F2pool, which ranks third in the computing power of the entire Ethereum network, published the article "Standing on the Right Side of History: EIP-1559" and officially stated its support for the EIP-1559 proposal. It is currently the only mining pool that publicly supports the proposal.F2Pool emphasized in the article that Ethereum has been in a high-speed growth mode in the past two years. Many ecological builders have created a large number of ecological applications such as DeFi, DAO, and NFT on Ethereum. It can also be observed from the data on the chain that Ethereum The number of transactions on-chain has surpassed its 2017 peak. However, the sharp rise in demand has led to rising gas fees on Ethereum, increasing network congestion, and sometimes even transactions failing even after users spend high gas fees, resulting in a poor user experience.EIP-1559 can solve this problem very well, and key developers (such as V God), core contributors, and users in the current community have chosen to support EIP-1559. Historically, it's important to be on their side. After undergoing a fork, Ethereum Classic (ETC) is still a growing ecosystem, but its attractiveness in terms of use and application has lagged far behind that of Ethereum.Subsequently, Spark Mining Pool and Bee Mining Pool also expressed their positions one after another, but they chose to oppose the EIP-1559 proposal. Spark Mining Pool said that this is the tyranny of the majority based on user experience. EIP-1559 chooses to destroy Basefee is a redistribution of wealth from miners to coin holders, which is a kind of "robbery". Bee Mining Pool believes that alleviating transaction congestion and high handling fees can be solved by dynamically expanding the GasLimit. The price is a very complicated factor and will not be boosted by a small amount of burning.For a long time, Ethereum miners have been the strongest opponents of EIP-1559, and most mining pools have also issued documents against EIP-1559 many times. Because it touches their direct interests, they are the most affected group.While the Flexpool mining pool publicly expressed its opposition to the EIP-1559 proposal, it also established the STOPEIP1559 website to monitor the positions of major mining pools on the EIP-1559 proposal. According to the website, 12 Ethereum mining pools have publicly opposed EIP-1559, and only F2pool publicly supported the proposal.Network congestion has a long history, why does EIP-1559 cause controversy
The congestion problem of the Ethereum network has been around for a long time. As early as 2017, due to the popularity of CryptoKitties, it caused great congestion on the Ethereum network, and the gas fee price soared. And this time the DeFi boom is all the rage, and the demand for transactions and loans on Ethereum has increased sharply, which has also caused a sharp increase in Gas fees, constantly hitting new highs.According to Gas Now data, the Gas Fee reached a record high of 1220 Gwei this week. However, the soaring gas fee has greatly increased the income of Ethereum miners, which gave miners the motivation to maintain the status quo and oppose EIP-1559. On February 23, The Block data showed that in February this year, the revenue of Ethereum miners exceeded US$1 billion, setting a new high, of which the income in the form of transaction fees was US$541 million, accounting for more than half of the miners’ income.The high Gas fee and the congested network have restricted the development of other projects in the Ethereum ecosystem. At present, some Ethereum users have quietly turned to other public chains that are more cost-friendly, and this has also given exchanges many opportunities. Since the beginning of this year, exchanges such as Binance and Huobi have built a DeFi ecosystem on their own public chains, attracting many projects and users.Therefore, if the Ethereum ecosystem wants to develop in the long run, it is time to make improvements. This is also the significance of the EIP-1559 proposal.EIP-1559 is a proposal to improve the Ethereum transaction fee mechanism jointly proposed by Vitalik and Ethhub_io founder Eric Conner in March 2019. And as early as 2018, V God proposed the prototype of the plan. In the past two years, EIP-1559 has been one of the most watched proposals in the community, but it has also caused huge controversy. At present, the EIP-1559 code phase is temporarily completed, and now only the block size test is required, and the implementation may begin this year.The core of EIP-1559 is to change the way to pay gas fees to miners. At present, miners package transactions mainly by selecting transactions with higher gas fees in the Mempool (transaction memory pool) for packaging.In the EIP-1559 proposal, the gas fee will be divided into two parts: base fee (Basefee) and miner tip (Tip). The base fee is the minimum price a user must pay in order to have their transaction included in a block, but the base fee is not owned by the miner but burned instead.If the Gas fee contained in the block exceeds the limit of 12.5M, then the block will be adjusted according to the actual usage demand, and the limit will be increased. The final upper limit of the Gas fee is 25M. Tips are an additional reward for miners. When the Gas fee reaches the final upper limit of 25M, miners will sort and package according to the level of tips.The EIP-1559 proposal adjusts the gas fee rate according to the actual usage demand, so as to ensure that the utilization rate of the block is maintained at a half-full state, and dynamically adjusts the upper limit of the gas fee to better cope with short-term demand peaks , to avoid network congestion caused by strong demand, thereby improving user experience.EIP-1559 is the general trend, but is it really the best solution?
EIP-1559 is mainly led by Tim Beiko, who is a staunch supporter of EIP-1559. According to his judgment, from a technical point of view, there are still some problems that need to be solved before the launch of EIP-1559. However, the launch of EIP-1559 is the general trend, and it may be launched as early as the "London" hard fork in July this year.V God said in the community that the greater significance of EIP-1559 is to allow each transaction to be confirmed within 1-2 blocks. If some miners leave, there will be new ones. If the miners are 51% attack, then all transfer to PoS as soon as possible. The miners seem to be the ones who have been sacrificed. The main income of the miners is from the users on Ethereum. If the users are lost, they will also lose their income. However, the miners are replaceable for the users. I agree with the EIP-1559 proposal There will also be new miners on the Ethereum network.Pan Zhibiao, the founder of Biyin, said, don’t add drama to yourself, EIP-1559 does not require miners to vote. The proposal caused the deflation of the currency price and sacrificed the interests of the miners, but from the overall perspective, it maintained the development of the community in the long run. At the same time, he also believes that "EIP-1559 is a weak solution, and it does not solve the problem of network congestion. The roadmap has already made it clear that it will eventually turn to PoS and ETH2.There is another reason why EIP-1559 must be launched, and that is market expectations. F2Pool believes that the current price of ETH may already include the value generated by the launch of EIP-1559. Most community members, including investors, are optimistic about the launch of EIP-1559 and hope that the proposal will play a role. Expectations are highly likely to have been reflected in the price of ETH. If the proposal is not passed, it may not be good for the short-term price of ETH, and the drop in ETH price may trigger a series of events, and eventually miners will also be affected, because their income is determined by the price of ETH.However, there is another point of view in the industry regarding the EIP-1559 proposal. Tim Roughgarden, a professor of computer science at Columbia University, has conducted an in-depth analysis of EIP-1559. He said that without EIP-1559 or other transaction fee mechanisms, the average transaction fee of Ethereum can still be reduced. Continued high transaction fees are still scalable problem, not a mechanism design problem. During periods when demand remains relatively stable, regardless of the mechanism employed, actual transaction fees cannot be expected to be substantially lower than market settlement prices. If the market clears the price already very high, the only way to lower the price is to increase supply or decrease demand.In this regard, V God holds the same opinion, indicating that EIP-1559 is only a temporary transitional solution, which may be able to alleviate the problem of high gas fees in the short term, but the real solution lies in improving the scalability of Ethereum, which is what ETH2.0 is committed to. problem to be solved.As July is getting closer and closer, the reason for considering launching EIP-1559 in the "London" hard fork is that the "difficulty bomb" may occur at that time is also an important consideration.On the Ethereum network, the difficulty of mining is not only affected by computing power, but also related to the "difficulty bomb" mechanism. As the height of the block rises, the difficulty bomb will increase the difficulty of mining more and more, and it will even increase exponentially in the later stage, until the block cannot be dug out, and the Ethereum network will come to a standstill. The setting of the difficulty bomb will help Ethereum transition from PoW to PoS more smoothly.The conversion of Ethereum from PoW to PoS is also a general trend. It is also difficult for the cryptocurrency world to support the computing power of the two Bitcoin networks. In addition, Ethereum also needs to run more complex smart contracts, which has great impact on TPS. higher requirement.In July, if the difficulty bomb breaks out, Ethereum transitions to PoS smoothly, and ETH2.0 goes online, then EIP-1559 will also complete its mission. After that, the scalability issues in the Ethereum network will be gradually resolved, especially the gas fee issue. Welcome to Join Odaily Official Community
