Thread by @tayvano_

I know a lot of research and technical brilliance went into EIP-1559. And I know I've stayed relatively quiet on the subject for a variety of reasons but...ugh. fml.

EIP-1559 does NOT deliver.

(ps: read before you speak. this isn't personal so don't @ me like it is. 😒)

EIP-1559, along with other EIPs, were initially conceived and proposed because the gas limit/gas price mechanism could be better. It's could be more efficient. It could be better for users. It could introduce more certainty. Improving things is GOOD.

timroughgarden.org/papers/eip1559…

EIP-1559 was one of few EIP's that gained social attention and traction. I was EXCITED to see a wider range of people involved in the process.

I would even sacrifice a perfectly perfect solution if it meant more people were more empowered to better the system.

Unfortunately the social traction seems to be mostly due to the not-so-subtle promises of "$ETH price go up!" and/or "TX fees go down!"

The early promises of overpayment reduction, market efficiency, fee stability, and even reduced TX fees seem to be.....not actually a thing.

This EIP is a fundamental change to an expansive, live network made of people, machines, systems and subsystems, each with massive financial incentives.

If we want to fuck with it, we must be mindful of how these thing operate in reality, not in theory.

"Deciding upon a gas_price is non-trivial. Normal (human) senders choose this according to prevailing market price for a given speed of execution. Contracts may not have enough information..."

– @LeastAuthority

github.com/LeastAuthority…

That is the reality that appears to be missing from EIP-1559.

The reality that people pay what clients, wallets, and random pricing APIs recommend they pay OR slightly less than the amount they profit off the execution of a TX.

aka "the prevailing market price."

The gas price or priority fee can be impacted by any number of EIPs, the miners, the need for network security, financial scale of potential contract executions, etc.

But at the end of the day the only thing that determines what people pay is what the market chooses to pay.

And the only way the market sets an educated (efficient) price is when participants accurately weigh their needs vs desires vs time til mined vs cost (vs profit)

As much as I love people, people are not good at that. Esp. since no accurate, live cost vs time graph exists. 😒

And since EIP-1559 seems to ignore much of this....

NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE IN TERMS OF WHAT YOU PAY FOR YOUR TRANSACTION.

NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE IN TERMS OF REDUCING COMPLEXITY FOR THE USER.

WHEN ETH PRICE GOES UP YOUR TXS ARE GUNNA BE GO WAAAAY UP.

👍👍👍👍👍🤦‍♀️

How do I know?

Bc I run a wallet. And I talk to other wallets. And my team does this all day every day and talks to other teams. And this morning they had an implementers call where the #1 question we had was:

HOW DOES ONE DETERMINE WHAT PRIORITY FEE TO RECOMMEND?

And, as of right now, the best answer anyone has is:

LOOK AT THE CURRENT TXS THAT ARE BEING MINED AND SHOW THE USER A RANGE OF COSTS WITH THEIR ROUGHLY ASSOCIATED `TIME TIL MINED` VALUES SO THE USER CAN ROUGHLY INDICATE WHERE THEIR PERSONAL COST VS TIME LINES INTERSECT.

You wanna know how Geth, Etherscan, EthGasStation, MetaMask, MyCrypto, and everyone else CURRENTLY determine what gas prices to show you?

Take one fucking guess.

github.com/ethereum/go-et…

ethgasstation.info/FAQcalc.php

medium.com/metamask/metam…

They LOOK AT THE CURRENT TXS THAT ARE BEING MINED AND SHOW THE USER A RANGE OF COSTS WITH THEIR ROUGHLY ASSOCIATED `TIME TIL MINED` VALUES SO THE USER CAN ROUGHLY INDICATE WHERE THEIR PERSONAL COST VS TIME LINES INTERSECT.

So..

If the information wallets/ui's/apis/people are using to determine the TX cost isn't going to change...

And the TX cost isn't going to decrease for users (until there is return to bear -> significantly lower demand)...

What exactly are we aiming to accomplish here?

I guess I expected more from a significant change that…
introduces new seen and unforeseen risks,
adds significant research & dev time for any team in production,
creates a period of uncertainty and instability for all market participants,
is pushed in the middle of the bull.

Maybe I'm missing something?

Something at the theoretical level?

Something at the EVM level?

Or the MEV one?

Something in the miners' p&l calculators?

Or the bots' p&l calculators? Especially if risk of failure rate/long mine times changes?

Or maybe I'm missing what the pushers of this EIP are prioritizing?

Bc there's one goal that made its way into EIP-1559 and didn't get lost with all the others promises. It still remains today:

Don't give the fees to miners. Burn the fees. Low inflation! *Negative* inflation!

Because low inflation is good.

It makes the ETH price is go up.

It allows the ETH maxis to better fight with the BTC maxis on Twitter.

And everything is better as a store of value rather than a promising network of open finance aiming to revolutionize our world.

Right? 🤔