Empirical Analysis of EIP-1559: Transaction Fees, Waiting Time, and Consensus Security

Y. Liu, Y. Lu, K. Nayak, F. Zhang, L. Zhang, Y. Zhao

ACM CCS 2022
arXiv ACM DL Cite this paper
AI summary

EIP-1559 improves user experience with easier fees and lower wait times, but has little effect on fees and security.

Abstract

Transaction fee mechanism (TFM) is an essential component of a blockchain protocol. However, a systematic evaluation of the real-world impact of TFMs is still absent. Using rich data from the Ethereum blockchain, mempool, and exchanges, we study the effect of EIP-1559, one of the first deployed TFMs that depart from the traditional first-price auction paradigm. We conduct a rigorous and comprehensive empirical study to examine its causal effect on blockchain transaction fee dynamics, transaction waiting time and security. Our results show that EIP-1559 improves the user experience by making fee estimation easier, mitigating intra-block difference of gas price paid, and reducing users’ waiting times. However, EIP-1559 has only a small effect on gas fee levels and consensus security. In addition, we found that when Ether’s price is more volatile, the waiting time is significantly higher. We also verify that a larger block size increases the presence of siblings. These findings suggest new directions for improving TFM.
Highlights

Cite this paper

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/ccs/LiuLNZZZ22,
  author       = {Yulin Liu and
                  Yuxuan Lu and
                  Kartik Nayak and
                  Fan Zhang and
                  Luyao Zhang and
                  Yinhong Zhao},
  editor       = {Heng Yin and
                  Angelos Stavrou and
                  Cas Cremers and
                  Elaine Shi},
  title        = {Empirical Analysis of {EIP-1559:} Transaction Fees, Waiting Times,
                  and Consensus Security},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 2022 {ACM} {SIGSAC} Conference on Computer and
                  Communications Security, {CCS} 2022, Los Angeles, CA, USA, November
                  7-11, 2022},
  pages        = {2099--2113},
  publisher    = {{ACM}},
  year         = {2022},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3548606.3559341},
  doi          = {10.1145/3548606.3559341}
}