Ethereum
Miners unconvinced as Ethereum devs look to move EIP-1559 to mainnet
EIP-1559 is one of the most anticipated upgrades to the Ethereum blockchain, and according to reports, it is likely to be on the mainnet fairly soon.
ETH devs handling the proposal are in the process of moving EIP to the mainnet, coming to an agreement that solutions to most research questions have been solved.
Finally, we started discussing how we can move this EIP to mainnet. There was agreement on the call that most research questions are now solved (modulo the transaction pool management and update rule analysis), so we should put together a plan to get this on mainnet.
— Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) December 3, 2020
Tim Beiko shared a Mainnet readiness checklist which revealed that most Theoretical Analysis and Simulations required for the implementation have already been completed.
The EIP 1559 was intended to accomplish four main design goals: Prevention of economic abstraction, a perpetual block subsidy, flexible block design, and the implementation of an algorithmic fee model.
Of all the design goals, the implementation of the algorithmic fee model that would eliminate the current gas price woes, is possibly the most anticipated part of the proposal.
After the implementation, users won’t need to set up the gas fees manually and the wallets compatible with EIP-1559 will auto-set it even when there is high activity in the network. The wallet will also add a tip for miners as compensation for their job.
However, a Community Outreach Report that gathers feedback from the ETH community on EIP-1559 revealed that miners believed they would be negatively impacted.
According to the report, almost all the miners answering the survey mentioned that EIP-1559 would negatively impact them and that they would consider mining on another chain than Ethereum if it went through.
This concern from miners quite possibly stems from the fact that miner revenue would considerably decrease as they earn fewer fees from each transaction.
Other mining concerns included potential collusion between miners, miners not upgrading their clients to support the EIP, and centralization of mining risks if small miners are pushed out of Ethereum.
Source: EIP-1559 Community Outreach Report
Given the fact that miners were the majority of respondents, the response to the project so far seems to have been more negative than positive.
