Ethereum co-founder proposes major changes to the network’s gas fee structure. Will this make it more like its main competitor?

Ethereum network architect Vitalik Buterin proposed in a recent article that Ethereum needs a better mechanism to charge transaction fees to users. He believes that there is room for improvement in the current fee system, which shows that the Ethereum development team is looking to optimize the economic model of its network to improve efficiency and user satisfaction.

Buterin’s views have received widespread attention from the community because, as one of the co-founders of Ethereum, he has a significant impact on the future development of the network. His article may inspire further discussions and potential improvements on transaction fee structures and network upgrades.

Similar fee model structure

Buterin’s post proposed paving the way for a more customized and fair transaction fee system, and the proposal immediately received positive responses from two main groups: On the one hand, Ethereum users were excited about the prospect of reducing the network’s high mainnet fees; on the other hand, Solana users and developers noticed that Buterin’s proposal sounded very much like the fee model that the Solana network itself has already adopted.

Mert Mumtaz, CEO and co-founder of Helius Labs and a well-known Solana developer, said in an interview with reporters, "This is definitely a solution similar to Solana." This evaluation reflects the Solana community's recognition of Buterin's proposal, and also points out the similarities in the fee structure design of the two networks. Mumtaz's comments may indicate that some of the core concepts of the Solana network are being considered and adopted by other major players in the industry, which is positive for promoting technological progress and innovation in the entire blockchain field.

So, how does Buterin’s “multi-dimensional gas fee” proposal resemble Solana’s “local fee market”?

Gas fees refer to the transaction fees that blockchain users pay to the network. This system is what gives tokens like Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) their value in many ways. If you want to do almost anything on the Ethereum network, you need ETH to pay for Gas, just like you need SOL to do things on Solana. When there is a lot of activity on the network, Gas fees go up. When there is less activity, Gas fees go down.

In some ways, Solana’s current gas fee structure and Vitalik’s “multidimensional gas fee” proposal stem from the same philosophy: To be fair, different types of on-chain transactions should cost different amounts based on demand. But in practice, the leaders of the two networks appear to have different ideas about how to implement such a concept, which can lead to significant differences in user experience.

Solana currently operates on a "local fee market" structure, where gas fees are calculated on a per-account, project-by-project basis. In this system, an increase in gas fees due to network congestion will mainly affect users who interact with the project, but will not significantly affect users in other parts of the network.

For example, on the Solana platform, if an NFT project is particularly popular and causes Gas fees to rise, this fee increase should theoretically be limited to those users who interact directly with the project. Other network users should not be affected by this because Solana's design allows for a "local fee market" that can dynamically adjust Gas fees based on the needs of specific accounts or projects.

However, there is disagreement among some in the Solana community about whether the native fee market can work as efficiently as intended. This disagreement stems in part from the challenges that even well-designed systems can encounter in situations of high demand, such as the potential for congestion in the so-called crowded “mini-gas” ecosystem. Despite such concerns, Solana’s native fee market is designed to improve the overall efficiency of the network and the user experience.

Solana’s “native fee market” structure does provide it with some advantages over Ethereum. On Ethereum, when an NFT project or any other application becomes very popular, the entire network may be affected because the increase in transaction demand will cause a general increase in gas fees for all users. This has happened on Ethereum many times in the past, especially when the NFT market is active or DeFi (decentralized finance) applications undergo large-scale token migration.

What are the differences?

Vitalik Buterin’s “multi-dimensional gas fees” concept aims to make Ethereum’s transaction costs more fair and reasonable. The concept optimizes the fee structure by taking into account different dimensions of a transaction, such as the complexity of the transaction and the actual demand for network resources. However, this proposal does not directly foreshadow the formation of a system similar to the “local fee market” of the Solana network, in which each individual project or application can have its own independent gas fee environment, which means that network congestion and fee increases generated by each project will only affect users who interact directly with that project, and will not affect other parts of the network.

In contrast, unlike Solana's independent fee market, the multi-dimensional Gas fee model adopted by Ethereum mainly classifies transaction costs at the network level. According to Ethereum core developer Marius Van Der Wijden, the purpose of the multi-dimensional Gas fee model is to identify and distinguish the various types of work required to execute network transactions, such as calculations, storage, and data calls, and treat them as different macro-work categories. This means that at any given point in time, these different work categories may be assigned different values ​​or fee weights depending on the needs of the network and the type of transaction. In other words, different types of on-chain transactions will be charged different fees because they contain different combinations and proportions of these computing categories. This multi-dimensional pricing strategy aims to more accurately reflect the actual amount of work required to complete various transactions, thereby improving the fairness and efficiency of the fee structure.

According to Buterin, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade, which went live in March, sends layer-two data from layer-two networks like Arbitrum to "blobs," which have separate standards and requirements for fees and processing rules compared to other transactions in Ethereum blocks. This design allows blobs to be stored and processed with different costs and constraints, providing a more flexible and efficient way to process specific types of data or transactions.

Summarize

At a macro level, extending the multi-dimensional gas fee model to more computing categories may improve Ethereum's transaction processing efficiency. As Vitalik Buterin believes, this will greatly enhance the scalability of the Ethereum mainnet.

However, even so, Ethereum users may still not be able to completely avoid network congestion and fee fluctuations caused by popular projects, because this model is not designed to be as "boutique" as Solana, which allows each project to form its own independent Gas fee environment.

The multi-dimensional gas fee model may improve the efficiency and scalability of Ethereum, but it will not completely isolate the network fluctuations caused by popular projects. Therefore, Solana and Ethereum still have obvious differences in network fee processing. #多维Gas费 #Buterin提案