SMG
@smg
We Fixed 1559! 🎉 A misspecification of EIP-1559’s update parameter is causing increased delays and higher gas fees. In SPEC-04, we suggest slowing down the base fee update parameter to fix this.
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SMG
@smg
A major problem that EIP-1559 solves is that it sets a dynamic base fee per gas so that there are different prices for blockspace during a DeFi summer and a DeFi winter. This helps the network hit its target of, on average, 15M gas per block.
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SMG
@smg
A myth of EIP-1559 is that because it achieves this gas target, it must be setting the right price for blockspace. This intuition comes from a static setting where if you’re selling the amount that you want to supply then the price you are setting must be the right market price.
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SMG
@smg
But Ethereum is not a static setting, and when we studied the problem using new dynamic methods that more faithfully model user behavior, we can see that this intuition no longer holds.
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SMG
@smg
Instead of rising and falling with slow seasonal variations, the dynamic base fee per gas used by EIP-1559 changes rapidly, spiking and cratering in the span of just a few blocks.
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SMG
@smg
This sensitivity means that EIP-1559 is easily fooled by randomness. When a random burst of transactions arrives for a few blocks, EIP-1559 thinks “we’re so back”, suddenly makes the entire blockchain more expensive, and low-fee transactions start to pile up.
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