Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the famous crypto project Ethereum, has been brainstorming for ideas that can help improve Ethereum’s current fee structure. A blog post was published on January 5, where Buterin revealed his proposal entitled the “Multidimensional EIP-1559.” In this blog post, he notes that various resources within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) have differences in gas usage and, therefore, have different demands.
He adds that the short-term “burst” capacity has different limits than the “sustained” capacity within the EVM, mentioning examples of block data storage, witness data storage, and block state size changes.
However, if you channel all the different resources into a single one and the limits are not aligned, it can lead to “very sub-optimal gas costs.” Buterin summarized his proposal with quite a hefty amount of technical math, so it’s understandable to get quite lost. However, in summary, Buterin’s proposal offers two potential solutions by using “multidimensional” pricing.
The Two Potential Solutions
The first possible solution calculates the gas cost for different resources like call data and storage. The math for this would be to take the base fee for each resource unit and divide it by the total base fee. The base fee is a fixed-per-block network fee, and it’s already included in the EIP-1559 algorithm.
The second option is undoubtedly more complicated, as it sets a base fee for using resources. However, each resource has burst limits. Not only that, but this option would also have “priority fees” that are set as a percentage. This set of fees is calculated by multiplying the percentage by the base fee.
Buterin does admit that the multidimensional fee structure has its drawbacks. Namely, “block builders would not be able to simply accept transactions in high-to-low order of fee-per-gas.” Not only would they have to balance the dimensions, but they must also solve additional mathematical problems.
We have still yet to see if the proposal will be passed and approved. After all, the network’s current priority is the next major upgrade. Ethereum is currently preparing for what they call “the merge.” This event will dock the Ethereum blockchain with the Beacon Chain, effectively ending the Proof-of-Work consensus. Tests are already underway on the Kintsugi testnet, and the team expects full deployment to take place during Q1 of 2022.
