Vitalik Buterin Suggests New Ethereum Gas Fee Structure

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has put forward a new proposal, Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 7706, to restructure the gas fees model for Ethereum transactions.

The EIP-7706 is designed to add a separate gas fee component for transaction call data, which includes the key information sent to smart contracts during transactions.

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Currently, Ethereum transactions have two types of gas fees: one for the computational effort required to execute a transaction and another for storing data on the blockchain. Buterin's proposal adds a third category specifically for call data, thereby separating the costs linked to data transfer from those related to execution and storage.

EIP-7706 also outlines a new transaction type that will manage base fees and priority fees as a vector, providing values for execution gas, blob gas, and call data gas.

This modification aims to refine how fees are calculated and charged, making the process more efficient, especially for transactions that are heavy on data but not necessarily in computation.

Buterin argues that the current system could benefit from a unified approach that manages all three types of fees collectively. He suggests that this new method could potentially lower transaction costs by managing them through a model that adjusts fees in tandem based on network demands.

According to Buterin, this change would reduce not only the theoretical maximum call data size per block but also, through basic economic principles, the average cost of call data itself.

This is particularly significant given that Ethereum has faced persistent challenges with high gas fees, which have impeded its scalability and cost-efficiency despite the shift from a Proof-of-Work to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.

If accepted, this proposal will mark a step towards optimizing Ethereum's performance and making it more accessible for users with varying transaction demands.

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