To the surprise of the crypto ecosystem, the question about “gas” fees on Ethereum after The Merge has just been raised.
The Merge, if completed around September 15, should be one of the key events of 2022. However, several questions still arise about its future operation, which requires a radical transition of the Ethereum blockchain from one operating mode to another.
Ethereum intends to move from a “proof of work” operation to a “proof of stake”. Proof of work is putting tens of thousands of computers in competition in order to validate transactions on a blockchain, it is this system that is used in particular by the Bitcoin blockchain. But it is a method that requires enormous energy consumption, since computers are running continuously.
For its part, with the “proof of stake”, finished the cryptographic puzzles to solve: to guarantee the security of the chain of blocks, the miners must put in a common pot 32 ethers and it is according to a draw system. fate that they will be chosen to validate the transactions. It is mainly with the aim of reducing energy consumption that the blockchain that Ethereum will use this type of method.
On its blog, the Euthereum Foundation gives real-time indications on the contours of this transition, which should take place soon, because many questions continue to arise.
The foundation has thus provided clarifications on the costs of “gas”, as first spotted by an article in the Journal Du Coin. As a reminder, the “gas” fee is a fee for carrying out a transaction on Ethereum, and it is currently high. These high fees have notably led some users to move towards blockchains with reduced fees, such as Cardano or Solana.
While until now most observers of the system thought that The Merge would allow a reduction in these fees, but this will ultimately not be the case.
“Gas fees are a product of network demand versus network capacity. The Merge deprecates the use of proof-of-work, moving to proof-of-stake for consensus, but does not significantly change significantly the parameters that directly influence the capacity or throughput of the network”, can we read on his blog.
In this context, the foundation recalled one of its priorities to reduce its costs, thanks to “rollups”. A rollup is a technological solution that makes it possible to increase the scalability of the Ethereum network (that is to say the number of transactions that a blockchain can carry out per second), while reducing a consequent part of the gas costs.
“After a transaction, rollups propose the new state of the mainnet or ‘certify’ the transaction. With optimized rollups, transactions are encoded on the Ethereum mainchain, further optimizing them by reducing gas fees,” can -we read on the foundation’s blog.
“With a rollup-centric roadmap, efforts are focused on increasing user activity at Layer 2, while enabling the Layer 1 Mainnet to be a decentralized settlement layer and secure, optimized for storing rollup data to make rollup transactions exponentially cheaper. The transition to proof-of-stake is an essential precursor to achieving this goal,” explained the Ethereum Foundation.