Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has once again put his thinking cap back in an attempt to improve the current fee structure for the network.
The proposal titled “Multidimensional EIP-1559” was featured in a blog post on January 5 in which Buterin noted that different resources in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) have different demands in terms of gas usage.
He added that there are different limits to short-term “burst” capacity compared to “sustained” capacity within the EVM, citing examples of block data storage, token data storage, and block state size changes. .
“The scheme we have today, where all resources are combined into a single multidimensional resource (‘gas’), does a poor job of managing these differences.”
The problem is that channeling all the different resources into one leads to “very suboptimal gas costs” when these limits are misaligned, he added.
Buterin described his rather complicated proposed changes with a lot of technical math, but simply put, the proposal offered two possible solutions using “multi-dimensional” pricing.
The first option would calculate the cost of gas for resources such as call data and storage by dividing the base rate for each resource unit by the total base rate. The base rate is a fixed network rate per block included in the EIP-1559 algorithm.
The second, more complex option sets a base rate for resource usage, but includes burst limits on each resource. There would also be “priority rates” that are set as a percentage and are calculated by multiplying the percentage by the base rate.
The downside of the multidimensional rate structure, he said, is that “block builders could not simply accept transactions in order of gas rate from highest to lowest.” They would have to balance the dimensions and solve additional math problems.
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It remains to be seen if the proposal will pass, as the priority right now is the next big update. The Ethereum network is currently preparing for “the merger” that will couple the Ethereum blockchain with the Beacon Chain and effectively end the Proof of Work. Tests are already underway on the Kintsugi testnet and a full rollout is expected in the first quarter of this year.
EIP-1559 was implemented in August as part of the London update to burn off a portion of the transaction fees to make the price of gas more predictable. Since it went live, 1.36 million ETH worth about $ 4.7 billion has been destroyed at current prices, according to the burn tracker.