Regarding Base transaction fees: they are high because the chain is at its target capacity (2x the throughput of the L1), but demand has increased dramatically. Data fees remain insignificant thanks to EIP-4844 blobs which are still far from capacity!  So while "it could be worse..." what can make it better? (cont)

Eng @ Coinbase, working on Base
https://bayardo.org

Longer term, increasing throughput leads to faster rate of state growth. While Ethereum roadmap has some cool ideas for dealing with state growth, they are not going to be ready in the short term. We need to keep overall growth aligned with the timeline for these sorts of features. (cont)

That said, we will be evaluating bumping up the target conservatively in the near term if we reach confidence this can be done safely from an infrastructure perspective, and we conclude it keeps us aligned with the longer term solutions to state growth. (cont)

On the bright side, overall L2 capacity is well below target (based on the fact that blobs are under-utilized). So Ethereum *as a whole* will continue scaling by traffic growth on other underutilized L2 rollups and/or new L2s coming online. Chain interop remains a UX sore point, but solutions to this are also underway.

Oh, and as for whether this is a new normal or a temporary spike in fees, it's tough to say. My guess is there's a temporary frenzy going on and fees could drop precipitously in the coming days, but the longer term trend in demand will continue to be up and to the right, so gotta get scaling anyway!

What would break if you increased it ~4x to match what Polygon is providing? 8m gas/s

Simplest thing would be to just increase the chain's target capacity. I'm pretty confident we could just 2X it right now and the Base sequencer + most node infra would handle it just fine. But "pretty confident" isn't good enough. And it's not just the short term we need to be concerned about. (cont)

Ethereum protocol R&D. Admirer of emergent order.

Thanks, that's a great point that DA will eventually kick in to keep state growth in check.

First off: Congrats, what a great problem to have! I would recommend bumping the gas limit to whatever you feel is safe for the sequencer. Yes, state growth is a concern, but this period of "too cheap to meter" DA won't last long anyway, so you might as well make the most of it.

Both BSC and Polygon are great examples of how NOT to push the limits, as they suffered bad chain halts and other issues, and both those chains are basically impossible for anyone to sync from scratch now.

What are your thoughts on past experiments in pumping the gas limit (let’s say Polyon in the early days, then BSC and others).

State growth is an issue for L1 because of the type of home users they target long before it’s an issue for professional infrastructure providers.

Amazing! I was able to do swaps for less than a cent, hope the network stabilizes  back again to that but demand its only likely to get waaay crazier

Love that your team is prioritizing longevity and sustainability. Keep up the amazing work!!

Thanks for the insight!

456 $degen $gloom