Ethereum London Hard Fork - All that you need to know

Riddhi -

Fellow Bitsians,

PocketBits would be supporting the upcoming Ethereum London Hard Fork, which is scheduled for the 5th of August 2021, at a block height of 12,965,000 or at approximately 05:25 PM IST.

To know more about how this would impact Trading, Deposits and Withdrawals head over to our support center.

PocketBits Support Center

So what's the ETH London Hard Fork all about? 🤔

If you’ve been active on Ethereum’s user forums, you’ve probably already come across "EIP-1559"; known as Ethereum Improvement Protocol 1559 or EIP-1559, this is one of the biggest changes to Ethereum since its genesis block. It has also popularly been dubbed as "The Ethereum London Hard Fork"

The London Hard Fork is a set of five Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs). The London Hard Fork aims to change the speed and incentivization of Ethereum mining.

Unlike Bitcoin, there is no limit to Ethereum's count and that makes it an inflationary crypto asset. Every time a block is validated, miners are rewarded with brand new coins. They are also compensated through transaction fees paid by users.

Miners will no longer earn from transaction fees once the update is implemented. This will reduce the supply and provide a much-needed boost to Ethereum. It would make transaction fees for those who use this blockchain more predictable.

The upgrade will ensure that no amount of network congestion causes the Ethereum gas price to skyrocket. This step toward price transparency will help to increase the adoption of decentralized applications on its own.

In addition to the proposed change to ETH's fee structure. The proposal would also provide UX, economic, and security benefits.

  • UX Benefits: Faster transaction inclusion and better fee estimation.
  • Economic Benefits: Requiring the transaction fees to be paid in ETH and higher block space demand.
  • Security Benefits: Mitigating risks of Near-Head Re-Orgs and more importantly making DoS/Spam attacks exponentially costly over time.

For a more in-depth explanation of the EIP-1559 benefits, we highly recommend reading through the HackMD paper.

HackMD: Why E-1559?