Vitalik Buterin Proposes New Ethereum Fee System
Ethereum (ETH) creator Vitalik Buterin has endorsed a major overhaul to address the limitations of the current gas fee system, Cryptopolitan reported on Monday (Nov. 9). According to the report, Ethereum currently uses a unified system where various computational efforts such as transactions, storage, data transfer, and cryptographic proofs are all quantified by a single metric called “gas.” While this system simplifies market operations and fee calculations, it can be problematic because it merges fundamentally different types of resources.
Buterin explained that these aggregation systems create inefficiencies because they treat different network resources as if they were interchangeable. The problem is that the network can reject safe blocks of transactions or accept transactions from potentially harmful blocks of transactions due to improper fee capping. Switching to a multidimensional gas model can better represent the actual limits and capabilities of the network, and increase throughput by not oversimplifying the exchangeability between resources, he said.
According to Buterin, the true potential of a multidimensional gas system lies in its flexibility to manage different network resources independently. For example, the network can be managed according to a pricing model independent of transaction processing or data storage, allowing the network to adapt more dynamically to changing demand. While this model can complicate the design and execution of smart contracts, the benefits in terms of scalability and efficiency could justify the effort, he said. Buterin added that the careful implementation of a multi-dimensional gas system could make Ethereum more robust and flexible, making it better suited to meet the needs of a diverse user base.
