Ethereum

Ethereum’s EIP-1559 Slated for August Activation

Ethereum’s EIP-1559 Slated for August Activation

Ethereum core developers have recently announced a new proposal for activating the London hard fork upgrade, with a new mainnet slated for August 4 that would include EIP-1559, one of Ethereum’s highly anticipated upgrades.

The EIP-1559 upgrade has proven to be a success after its Ropsten testnet two weeks ago. The upgrade, which is included in the Ethereum blockchain’s update codenamed London, is set to introduce a gas fee burn for every transaction, which will make gas fees (as measured by gwei) more predictable, thereby technically increasing the scarcity of Ether (ETH).

EIP-1559 is controversial for the Ethereum blockchain because it will make calculations on a transaction’s gas price easier to determine, effectively lowering the average gas price by eliminating false estimations per bid. However, this reduction in gas price is only effective in the short term, given that Layer 2 solutions and the pending completion of Ethereum 2.0 will also impact gas fees later on. The fee burn will also effectively reduce the supply of ETH, turning Ethereum itself into a deflationary asset and providing conditions for its scarcity down the line.

With EIP-1559, once the Ethereum mainnet gains enough traction in terms of activity, the burn rate will override the rate of issuance, creating a reverse friction for the asset, hence the deflationary character. The London hard fork also includes four other improvement proposals: EIP-3198, EIP-3529, EIP-3541, and EIP-3554.

The proposed mainnet activated was set for block 12965000, with an estimated activation time between 13:00 UTC and 17:00 UTC on August 4th. The proposal is still up for contention, however, and Tim Beiko, a coordinator working for various organizational researchers working on EIP-1559, posted the pull request on Github. 

Beiko tweeted about the matter:

“Yep, unless someone objects in the next 24h, London should land on August 4th. A few client teams have [approved] it already, but we want to be sure no one has a serious objection. Keep an eye out.”

The improvement proposal was expected to activate sometime in mid-July, even as some concerns by the Ethereum community have suggested that it would be slightly delayed. After EIP-1559’s activation alongside the London hard fork, the next phase would entail the merging of Ethereum 2.0 in which the Beacon Chain will be docked to the Ethereum mainnet, allowing Proof-of-Stake to go live on the Ethereum mainnet.

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.

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