V God warns: High transaction fees will threaten the security of Ethereum

According to BlockBeats, after the Ethereum transaction fee reached 100gwei recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned on July 22 that high fees would undermine network security if no countermeasures were taken.

A recent paper pointed out that miners are increasingly dependent on fees, which may encourage selfish mining behavior. Miners may disrupt the way transactions are processed in order to obtain greater profits. Therefore, Vitalik called for reforming the cryptocurrency fee system to protect the security of the network. Mythos Capital founder Ryan Adams also tweeted on July 22 that the Ethereum network must "find a way to accommodate more value in each block."

Vitalik Buterin is advocating for the implementation of Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1599 to reform the cryptocurrency's fee system. The proposal involves cutting the base fee to reduce miners' reliance on transaction fees. However, some in the community are not too keen on the proposal.

Vitalik urges passage of EIP-1559

Vitalik’s article cited a 2016 paper by four Princeton University researchers titled “On the stability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward,” outlining the risks posed by increased fees.

The paper seeks to warn of several threats to Bitcoin’s performance and security that could materialize over time as block rewards decrease and miners become increasingly reliant on transaction fees.

The researchers note that as block rewards decrease, high variance in fees could incentivize “selfish” mining behavior, predicting that miners could attempt to fork “rich” blocks to steal the rewards contained therein.

Ethereum community cautious

In the EIP-1599 proposal, the total capacity of the network will increase from the current 12.5 million gas to 16 million gas, and the base fee will fluctuate depending on whether the capacity is above or below the target of 10 million gas. Miners will only prioritize transactions based on the handling fee, and the base fee will be eliminated.

The Ethereum community is still far from reaching a consensus in support of EIP-1599. Nick Jonshon, founder of Ethereum Name Service, also said on Twitter that he questioned the proposal because there was no compliance analysis to ensure that the development of the cryptocurrency fee system would meet expectations after the proposal was passed.

There are also concerns that miners could manipulate base fees. Developer Fernando Nieto also criticized the 2016 paper cited by Vitalik, arguing that its underlying assumptions are flawed.