EIP-1559 Implementation Call To Take Place On February 26th

Table of Contents

• What is EIP-1559?
• How has Flexpool Garnered Support In Their Opposition?
• Is Everyone Misunderstanding EIP-1559?

A community call to implement EIP-1559 - a proposal that brings in a transaction pricing mechanism - will be done on February 26th. The EIP has turned out to be pretty controversial and seems to have split the community. 

While most of the network seems to be in favor of the change, there is another group, led by Flexpool, that’s opposing the proposal.

What is EIP-1559?

EIP, or Ethereum Improvement Proposal, are changes to the platform - including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards - proposed by any community member and then discussed internally. The EIP was first proposed in April 2019 by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin himself. 

One of the most controversial aspects of the EIP is that it burns most of the transaction fees paid out to miners and fixes gas fees volatility. It seems to have been accepted by the developer community.

How has Flexpool Garnered Support In Their Opposition?

With Ethereum reaching an all-time high and the transaction fees being pretty high, it is pretty evident to see why some of the miners are opposed to the proposal. Along with gas fees reaching their highest levels in years, Ethereum mining itself has become a full-scale business, with companies owning huge mining plants and firms like Linzhi rolling out new ASIC Ethereum miners. 

If this EIP does come into effect, the miners may be forced to focus on lesser-known Ethash coins, which could be extremely profitable. This is why eight mining pools, with a combined hashrate of 30% have chosen to back Flexpool, in their opposition towards EIP-1559.

Is Everyone Misunderstanding EIP-1559?

Eric Conner (@eric.eth), one of the most well-known Ethereum and DeFi developers, feels that most of the controversy behind the EIP stems from a significant misunderstanding. According to Conner, “it’s a bit frustrating that the entire narrative for 1559 has shifted to “this is good because it burns eth.’” According to Conner, the main focus of the EIP is to improve user experience, while the fees burning aspect is just a side-effect:

“It’s important to note that burning the BASEFEE is only a technical side note in the paper and medium article. The focus was purely on improving the user experience and fixing the gas market’s inefficiencies...So yes it’s great we may burn some ETH but people are going way overboard on expectations here. It’s not all parts of every fee that is burned and once we have scaling, fee burn will be even less.”

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.