Ethereum Miners Threaten Strike Ahead of EIP-1559
- EIP-1559 has the potential to reduce ETH mining profits by as much as 50%.
- Miners have threatened to pool their hash rate to show the potential to sway the network.
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Last week, Ethereum blockchain developers approved EIP-1559, a proposal to replace the supply and demand-based transaction fee system on Ethereum. Under the new system, a new standard rate for processing transactions called “BASEFEE” would be applied across the network. While the fee would rise and fall according to market demand, it would be set up by the network—not the miners. The predetermined transaction fees also wouldn’t go to miners but get burned.
The proposal was months in the making and was designed as an answer to unpredictable gas fees the network has been experiencing since the beginning of the year. Aside from reducing fees, EIP-1559 would also reduce the number of ETH in circulation and boost the token’s price. Justin d’Anethan, a sales manager at Equos, told Business Insider the upgrade could be a recipe for “explosive” price growth.
However, a large number of Ethereum miners have voiced their concern over the upgrade, warning they are ready to form an organized strike if the upgrade goes through. Several large miners announced they intend to direct their collective hash rate to Ethermine, a leading ETH mining pool that has been a vocal opponent of EIP-1559. The protest is set to take place on 1 April and last for 51 hours. The miners believe they will be able to show they have enough power to significantly alter the network. Some said that they plan on shutting down their miners as a form of protest.
Sparkpool, the Ethereum mining pool responsible for over 23% of the network’s hash rate, has also opposed the upgrade.
It is still unclear whether the announced protests will sway public opinion regarding the update. According to Tim Beiko, a ConsenSys product manager overseeing the implementation of EIP-1559, the changes will come into force “no matter what.” He noted that the only way the changes wouldn’t be applied in full would be if a serious vulnerability was removed from the proposal.
- MetaMask Bridges was designed to aggregate multiple blockchain bridges in one place, making it easier and more secure for users to transfer their assets from one network to another.
- The new feature currently supports the Ethereum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Polygon blockchains, as well as the Connext, Hop, Celer cBridge, and Polygon Bridge.
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- Over the weekend the Ethereum PoW network fell victim to a replay exploit, with the attacker executing the same transaction on two chains at the same time.
- The exploit was caused by a contract vulnerability in the Omni cross-chain bridge, and did not affect the ETHW network itself.
- Ethereum’s PoS upgrade, also known as the Merge, was executed at 06:44 AM UTC on 15 September, combining the existing blockchain with the parallel Beacon Chain.
- The move has reduced Ethereum’s energy consumption by more than 99%, which is equal to 0.2% of the global electricity consumption.