In the past few months, Ethereum core developers have been busy with the “London” upgrade, the next upgrade after the Berlin upgrade launched in April. Although the activation time has not been determined, the EIP included in the “London” upgrade has been determined. According to the “London” upgrade specification, these EIPs are:
EIP-1559: The fee market reform of the ETH 1.0 chain
EIP-3198: BASEFEE opcode
EIP-3529: Reduce gas refund
EIP-3541: Reject new contracts beginning with 0xEF bytecode
EIP-3554: Difficulty bomb postponed to December 1, 2021
Let’s take a look at each EIP in detail!
EIP 1559: Fee market reform of ETH 1.0 chain
EIP 1559 is one of the most eye-catching changes in Ethereum, and it is also the biggest reform that will be introduced in the “London” upgrade. EIP 1559 will introduce a “basic fee” in the block, and the basic fee will track the gas price of the Ethereum network (the gas price depends on the user’s demand for block space). This means it will be easier for wallets and users to accurately estimate transaction fees. In addition, EIP 1559 adds a new transaction type that allows users to specify the maximum fee they are willing to pay, and the maximum fee they are willing to pay to miners. The difference between the maximum fee specified by the user and the (base fee + miner tip) will be refunded to the user (Translator’s Note: If there is a difference). Finally, EIP 1559 will destroy part of the transaction fee. Many people in the Ethereum community believe that this is an important improvement to the economic mechanism of the Ethereum network.
The operation, advantages and impact of EIP 1559 are far from being covered by an article. Click here to view all materials about EIP 1559. Click here to watch the part about EIP 1559 in the “Take You to EIP” series of videos.
EIP 3198: BASEFEE opcode
EIP 3198 is the supporting EIP of EIP 1559. This EIP only adds the opcode BASEFEE. This opcode will return the value of the base cost of the block it is in. In this way, the smart contract can access the value on the chain, which helps to submit fraud proofs and create trust-free gas price derivatives. For a complete introduction to the proposal, please watch “Ratan Rai Sur Takes You to EIP 3198: BASEFEE Opcode”.
EIP 3529: Reduce gas refund
Another important change introduced by the “London” upgrade is the cancellation of the gas refund for the SELFDESTRUCT opcode and the reduction of the gas refund for the SSTORE opcode. Although the gas refund was originally intended to incentivize developers to clear the state when possible, in fact, after the appearance of the Gas Token, the gas refund actually led to an increase in the scale of the state. Users can mint Gas Token when the gas price is low, and then destroy it when the gas price is high, and get a refund.
In addition, the gas refund will also cause the block execution time to change. Before the “London” upgrade, up to 50% of the gas refund can be used to perform further calculations in the same block. This means that the block size can be up to 1.5 times the upper gas limit. EIP 3529 will reduce the “execution refund” from 50% to a minimum of 20%. This change can offset the block size difference caused by EIP 1559 to a certain extent (1559 allows the gas usage of the block to be up to twice the current gas limit).
EIP 3541: Reject new contracts beginning with 0xEF bytecode
EIP 3541 is a simple change, laying the foundation for EIP 3540’s EVM improvement proposal. Once EIP 3541 is implemented, new contracts beginning with 0xEF bytecode will not be able to be deployed. Existing contracts will not be affected. After the “London” upgrade is launched, contract deployments that start with 0xEF in the shortest bytecode sequence but do not match the initial sequence of the existing contract will be rolled back to determine the contract compatible with EIP-3540 semantics. Please note: EIP 3540 requires additional deployment of network upgrades. In addition, it should be noted that if EIP 3540 is not deployed, EIP 3541 can also be used to reserve the starting byte for other scenarios.
EIP 3554: Difficulty bomb postponed to December 1, 2021
EIP 3554 will postpone the difficulty bomb (also known as the ice age). Difficulty Bomb/Ice Age is a mechanism introduced by Ethereum to “freeze” mining when the Ethereum network transitions to proof of equity. Given that the Ethereum network is not ready to transition to proof of stake, we need to delay the detonation time of the difficulty bomb. It has been postponed three times before, during the Metropolis (EIP-649), Constantinople (EIP-1234) and Muir Glacier (EIP-2384).
Although the previous few times have been delayed for a long time, but this time the core developers only postponed the difficulty bomb until December 2021. At that time, the Ethereum network will either successfully transition to proof-of-stake or upgrade again.
These are all the changes introduced by the “London” upgrade. The release version of the testnet block and related clients will soon be announced on the Ethereum Foundation’s blog.
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Author/ Translator: Jamie Kim
Bio: Jamie Kim is a technology journalist. Raised in Hong Kong and always vocal at heart. She aims to share her expertise with the readers at blockreview.net. Kim is a Bitcoin maximalist who believes with unwavering conviction that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency – in fact, currency – worth caring about.