1inch Network Optimized For The Berlin Hard Fork

Before the Berlin upgrade, a read from a smart contract’s storage cost 800 gas and a call between smart contracts cost 700 gas. Following today’s implementation, a read on Ethereum will cost 2,100 gas, and calls between smart contracts will cost 2,600 gas. The new cost structure applies only to the first reads and calls, while all repeated operations in the same transaction cost 100 gas.

The Berlin hard fork is a non-backward compatible hard fork that is seen as the biggest milestone ahead of Ethereum’s London hard fork. It incorporates four Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that adjust gas prices and introduce new transaction types to the network—EIP-2565, EIP-2718, EIP-2929, and EIP-2930.

EIP-2565 reduces gas costs for specific transaction types that use modular exponentiation, while EIP-2718 makes all transaction types “backward compatible,” allowing the addition of new transaction logic into Ethereum. The proposal enables EIP-2930, which introduces a new transaction type allowing its users to create a preset outline of addresses and amounts to lower gas costs. Finally, EIP-2929 focuses on security by increasing gas costs for “opcode” transactions, lowering the risk of DoS attacks.

According to an announcement published by 1inch, the work that has gone into the optimization of the protocol will make the 1inch smart contract more cost-efficient than before the Berlin hard fork. In particular, 1inch will offer lower gas costs in comparison to just about all other Ethereum-based DeFi protocols, as most of them are yet to be optimized for the hard fork.

The exchange optimized its contracts so they wouldn’t suffer from the blowback brought on by EIP-2929, which will increase gas costs while swapping tokens on DEXs by as much as threefold.