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Ethereum-burning EIP-1559 upgrade goes live, but ETH gas fees remain ridiculously high
Coinhead
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A new era has dawned for Ethereum — but users who were hoping that EIP-1559 would make the network deflationary or cause a dramatic reduction in gas prices have been left disappointed.
At least one deflationary block had been mined since the London hard fork went live last night, but for the most part the block rewards were outweighing the fraction of transaction fees that were being burned as part of the long-awaited EIP-1559 (Ethereum Improvement Protocol No. 1559)
An Ethereum block is produced roughly every 13 seconds, with two ETH being created as a reward to its miner. Between about 0.07 and 1.1 ETH were being destroyed with each block when a reporter “watched the burn” this morning.
In the span of 303 blocks over about an hour, 160.51 ETH was burned – but 606 new ETH had been produced. That means the upgrade has made Ethereum less inflationary, not deflationary.
In the half-day since London went live last night, more than 3,300 Ether — around A$12.5 million worth — had been burned.
Gas fees hadn’t budged much, averaging about 39 Gwei, or A$3.75. That means a complex transaction — such as adding or removing liquidity on Uniswap — was costing users as much as A$30 or so.
Bro the ‘big’ change made to Ethereum just raised my gas charges. So annoyed and confuse to why that would happen.
— Timothy Kirschman (@TimothyKirschm1) August 6, 2021
Gas fees not reduced much on Ethereum network. ERC20 transfer and trading fees still higher.
— Cipher Tech (@ciphertoken) August 6, 2021
#Ethereum #gas prices still suck. It literally is like #London
— 🖕🏻J Ƒʉͫcͧкͭιͪηͣ Tylee ♿️ (@jtcyberfm) August 6, 2021
EIP-1559 is highly technical and some had tried to warn beforehand that it wouldn’t reduce gas prices, a source of frustration for many Ethereum users. Alternatives like Binance Smart Chain and Polygon have flourished basically because transactions are much cheaper on those platforms.
2/5
Here’s a brief explanation by Tim Beiko who has been influential in implementing EIP-1559. https://t.co/Je4xKnOwrT— Uniswap Detective🕵️ (@UniswapD) May 8, 2021
According to Ethereum developer Tim Beiko’s willeip1559lowergasprices.org, the upgrade was never intended to lower gas fees.
“One counterintuitive aspect of EIP-1559 is that it will not significantly lower gas prices on Ethereum… That being said, 1559 does improve the accuracy with which users can estimate gas prices.”
Beiko seemed happy with the upgrade on Twitter, posting that users would be able to take advantage of the features of EIP-1559 once wallets such as the popular Metamask interface update their software.
OK, here’s an example of the “better UX” that I just used (thanks @MetaMask for the beta access 🥰)
Gas prices are going high now because of an NFT drop, it seems. I’m not sure what price to pay. I submitted the following txn: https://t.co/0DIhmd84Ug https://t.co/FdOibaqDmu
— Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth ☀️ (@TimBeiko) August 5, 2021
A few reasons to ignore hot takes about “1559 made high gas prices!1!”
1. new tx type experiments → congestion
2. people sending first burn tx → congestion
3. market volatility usually increases gas prices
4. miners are targeting 13.5mm gas, not 15mm
5. UIs still rolling out— trent.eth (@trent_vanepps) August 5, 2021
