storm on Warpcast

Content pfp

0 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

storm pfp

~70% of Base chain state has been taken over by a single protocol of questionable utility thanks to cheap fees + storage mispricing, a tiny number of users have monopolized the majority of network resources this has implications for every cheap fee blockchain. some thoughts 👇

10 replies

12 recasts

54 reactions

storm pfp

the chart above visualizes how Base’s state is currently being used. size of each rectangle = how much state is used by each type of contract the chart was generated using the same methodology as our recent blogpost looking at Ethereum. find it here: https://www.paradigm.xyz/2024/03/how-to-raise-the-gas-limit-1

1 reply

0 recast

4 reactions

storm pfp

what is the problem? 1) thanks to XEN, 0.3% of Base users are monopolizing 67.8% of the chain's resources 2) state is permanent. Base nodes now need to store + propagate this spam XEN data forever 3) storage abuse can continue until gas pricing is redesigned

3 replies

0 recast

5 reactions

storm pfp

how does this affect blockchain scaling? scaling blockchains to become 100x or 1000x larger will require efficient use of computational resources it is not viable for the majority of a network’s resources to be consumed so inefficiently

1 reply

0 recast

6 reactions

storm pfp

how bad is this? in absolute terms the problem is still small. Base contract storage is only 53.4 GiB in size (compared to 245 GiB on Ethereum) the problem has also become less severe over time. XEN state share peaked at around 85% back in october

1 reply

0 recast

4 reactions

storm pfp

is the problem fixed? so far there have been no mitigations enacted to prevent future abuse there’s nothing preventing one or ten new XEN-like protocols from emerging to fill the state with spam. especially as fees continue to fall

1 reply

0 recast

2 reactions

storm pfp

is this specific to Base? not at all. XEN has left a large mark on every major EVM chain for example, XEN is now the largest contract on Ethereum. it has been responsible for 8.8% of all Ethereum state growth over the past year and it now takes up 3.5% of all state

1 reply

0 recast

2 reactions

storm pfp

is XEN unique? XEN is just one example of a broader pattern when cheap computational resources are combined with speculation, those resources will be used in unintended ways blobscriptions, gas tokens, and Solana’s ORE can all be lumped in this category

2 replies

0 recast

6 reactions

storm pfp

what can be done? simply put, storage needs to be repriced to reflect the true burden that it imposes on the network there are many ways to do this, each with varying levels of impact to normal users but pricing storage is fundamentally difficult

1 reply

0 recast

3 reactions

storm pfp

why is pricing storage difficult? most of the operations within a transaction are easy to price because they happen instantaneously but storage is different…once you pay for storage, that data gets stored by the network *forever*. so it's like pricing a lifetime subscription

1 reply

1 recast

3 reactions

storm pfp

sooner or later every chain will need to confront these storage spam issues I’ve been modeling some potential fixes but it’s still a WIP if you have ideas for how to improve storage spam or pricing hmu here or DM’s. I might be able to model it out

1 reply

0 recast

5 reactions

storm pfp

thanks for reading my broad mission the past couple months has been to use ultra high resolution data to help scale Ethereum more scaling data deep dives incoming

2 replies

0 recast

4 reactions