DEFI user paid $36,000 in gas fees due to input errors. Can EIP-1559 solve the problem?

Ethereum fees have reached record levels. One Uniswap user paid $36,000 in gas fees for a transaction, far higher than current prices.

Twitter is abuzz with complaints about unbearable fees for using the Ethereum network, but this fee led one DeFi user to make a mistake.

The sky-high transaction was announced on Twitter by Groundhog Network co-founder and CTO, who confirmed that the transaction was related to Uniswap.

The fee turned out to be a typo, as the user manually entered two gwei prices at the same time. The fee of 500,801 gwei should have been entered as one (500 gwei) and another (801 gwei). The price was a whopping 24.94 ETH, or about $36,000.

According to data from Bitinfocharts.com, the average Ethereum transaction fee has soared by more than 1,000% since the beginning of the year and has now soared to an all-time high of about $40. The Ethereum gas tracker report shows that the average ERC-20 transfer fee is now $23.85, and the average Uniswap exchange fee is $73.79.

Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-1559 could help alleviate some of these fee issues, with developers hinting it could launch in the “London” fork.

On Feb. 23, Ethereum lead developer Tim Beiko published an update on EIP-1559, in which he said: “The large state testing is 99% complete.” He added that a developer call on March 5 will confirm whether EIP-1559 will be included in the London upgrade.

The current gas calculation system includes a transaction bidding system in which miners naturally prioritize the highest bids, while lower bids take longer. EIP-1559 will modify this bidding system by dynamically adjusting fees so that users will pay the lowest bid for the block. This allows automated market makers and wallets to accurately calculate fees and provide better valuations. Beiko elaborated:

“From another perspective, EIP-1559 makes the included price of a transaction explicit in the protocol, rather than implicit as it is now.”

The EIP-1559 proposal will also destroy the gas fees paid for ETH, which will have a long-term impact on Ethereum issuance and supply. Of course, some miners disagree with this, although Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin commented that any opposition actions they take may only accelerate the transition to PoS.