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Technology

Major Ethereum Upgrade Set To Alter Supply, Fix Transaction Fees (reuters.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain network, is about to undergo a technical adjustment that will significantly alter the way transactions are processed, as well as reduce the supply of the ether token and sharply boost its price. The scheduled coding revamp will go live on Aug. 4. From a report: The upgrade known as Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 is similar, analysts said, to a bitcoin "halving" event in which periodic adjustments reduced the supply of bitcoin. Each halving helped propel bitcoin's price to higher records. While bitcoin is the preferred store of value in the digital ecosystem, Ethereum has emerged as the leading financial infrastructure, settling over $12 billion of daily transactions, according to a Grayscale report released in February this year.

Andrew Keys, managing partner at DARMA Capital, said ether's current price has yet to factor in the looming software upgrade. He estimates that the expected software adjustment next week, coupled with another upgrade in the first quarter of 2022, should "easily quintuple the price of ether" by next year. On Thursday, ether was up 0.6% at $2,312. EIP-1559 is a software upgrade that fundamentally changes the way transactions are processed on Ethereum by providing clear pricing on transaction fees in ether paid to miners to validate transactions and "burning" a small amount of those tokens. The burned tokens will be permanently taken out of circulation. In token burning, miners would typically send the tokens to specialized addresses that have unobtainable private keys. Without access to a private key, no one can use the tokens, putting them outside the circulating supply. By reducing the number of tokens, the currencies that remain in circulation become rarer and more valuable.
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Major Ethereum Upgrade Set To Alter Supply, Fix Transaction Fees More

Major Ethereum Upgrade Set To Alter Supply, Fix Transaction Fees

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  • Why would I want that in a currency? Or even a stock?

    This is how you trigger getting regulated out of existence.
    • Then whitepaper outlines reasons why. check it out. Very interesting read.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by waveclaw ( 43274 )

        The EIP 1559 paper, available on GitHub, introduces a new type of transaction that does a number of things. It makes some claims, but they are dubious. Most of the text covers the intent of the changes which does not align with the actual impact it will have.

        tl;dr - adds a neat way to keep prices of using the Etherium network low but throws in an unrelated tax on the poor and actual users to benefit the rich early adopters who hoard their tokens.

        Most of the changes are unrelated, but just bundled into

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Why would I want that in a currency? Or even a stock?

      First of all: there's nothing "artificial" about the scarcity - it is just the same for Bitcoin as with Fiat such as the US Dollar, There do not exist an infinite number of them, they have a regulated Finite supply. The only difference really with cryptos Is you are given a definitive, predictable policy on how many more can be printed and at what rate over the lifetime of the currency, Instead of allowing a single entity to decide to print as much

      • There isn't a finite supply of US Dollars in the same way that there is of Bitcoin. The U.S. Federal Reserve can print as much money as it likes, and banks create money too. In contrast ~83% of all Bitcoins there will ever be already exist. It's true that printing too much money could devalue the currency or cause undesirable levels of inflation - people argue all the time how much it _should_ print - but the fact remains that it can print any number.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          There isn't a finite supply of US Dollars in the same way that there is of Bitcoin. ...

          Incorrect, they really are both finite in the same way - Actually, there are not "different ways" of being Finite.. Something is either Finite or Not. Bitcoin is Finite in the same way as with traditional currencies - Precious metals such as Gold and Silver which contain a value that derive from Scarcity... the Natural state required for any resource to have value, and cannot be so easily stolen by governments by

  • undergo a technical adjustment that will significantly alter the way transactions are processed, as well as reduce the supply of the ether token and sharply boost its price

    So, it's basically market manipulation (same as with Bitcoin).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      No, it's a Non Sequitur. It's nothing more than some Xyz company deciding to stop printing infinite shares of their stock - it prevents the value from going to $0 purely by dilution of existing shareholder's percentage of the equity. The market determines the overall price of each currency, and there is no guarantee about How and If Ether's price will be affected by the move.

      If Ethereum turns out to be worth anything and gets used, then cutting the printing of more will make it more useful for transact

    • The only market manipulation in Bitcoin has nothing to do with Bitcoin and everything to do with speculative markets trading Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a radical and revolutionary technology for transferring control of money to the people and out of the hands of gatekeepers. Things like this which really only impact people speculating for profits on exchange markets... who gives a shit? Anyone who gets burned gambling in the markets has it coming. I don't care what happens to the speculative price of bitcoin this
  • Ether is a hoax and a Ponzi Scheme made to enrich its owners and no one else.

    When you look here [coinmarketcap.com] you'll see a progress bar next to Bitcoin which shows how many BTC have been created and it's finite. There's no such progress bar next to Ether because its owners can make as many Ether for themselves as they like!!

    It's one big rip-off and anyone stupid to fall for it is gonna get burned. Like third-degree burned.

  • decentralized (Score:5, Insightful)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @12:40PM (#61647275)

    Call it decentralized but manipulate it just like a central bank?

    • Re:decentralized (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:13PM (#61647415)

      Call it decentralized but manipulate it just like a central bank?

      Good point.
      The move from POW to POS could be the undoing of Ethereum - miners that have been manipulating the serious issues ETH has with scalability, absolutely creaming it on 'GAS' fees, are certainly not looking forward to the London hard fork.
      Fact is, ETH is broken - ridiculously high transaction fees and ridiculous slow transactions.
      The London fork is part of an attempt to 'fix' this issue, as ETH moves toward POS.

      I wouldn't say it is being 'manipulated', rather, it is trying to solve a problem of its own making and popularity - complete lack of scalability.

      There are a good few far better options that do what ETH have attempted far better, infinitely better in fact, but they don't have a ridiculously large market cap.

      "Too big to fail" - where have we heard that before?
      Oh yeah, the 2007/2008 financial crash ...

      • Re:decentralized (Score:4, Insightful)

        by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Monday August 02, 2021 @01:29PM (#61647475)

        ... and the absolute irony of what ETH is supposed to represent and what it really is right now, never ceases to amaze me.

        The idea of decentralised currency with no transaction fees, of financial services with no middle men.

        It's off to a great start ( /s ) -

        * onramp with FIAT at an exchange = FEES.
        * Use that FIAT to buy ETH = FEES.
        * Send that ETH to another wallet = FEES.
        * The other wallet sends that ETH to an exchange = FEES.
        * Offramp that ETH to FIAT = FEES.

        Joe: "Hey, John, I'm going to send you $200 via this awesome cryptocurrency thing! So, it'll take me about 25 minutes and cost $10 - have you got everything setup your end? No? Ok, you need to have a wallet - here's a link with a 50 step process. You also need to get an account on an exchange - here's a link with a 10 step process, it could take a few days for your KYC to pass though - no, John, not that kind of KYC... but then you are good to go!"

        Joe: "Hey John, did you get that $200 I sent?"

        John: "Er, yeah, but I only ended up with $180 and it took 5 days!"

        • JUST LIKE BITCOIN!!!! (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Joe: "Hey John, did you get that $200 I sent?"
          John: "Er, yeah, but I only ended up with $180 and it took 5 days!"

          HOLY SHIT - YOU'VE JUST DESCRIBED BITCOIN!!!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by antus ( 6211764 )
          Thats maybe only partly true. You do not need to use an exchange to onboard. If you just want to receive eth its quite easy to install metamask in a browser or mew on a phone and create a wallet to start accepting funds. Like all software be on alert for malware and use trusted sources. Its not a hard process. The fees after EIP1559 will be a lot less than $20 equivalent, and the time a lot quicker than you think. EIP1559 also allows doubling the size of blocks to increase throughput when there is sufficien
        • You are restricting your use case to consumer-to-consumer transactions. What about business-to-business transactions, and the many currently existing and possibly replaceable business-to-bank transactions, including lines of credit?

          And the fiat to ETH will eventually handled at the merchant imo. The price will stabilize (eventually, much higher) and the merchant can offer your change in cash or crypto. Or, you could get it from the customer service station at the grocery store (the same place they sell

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          The idea of decentralised currency with no transaction fees, of financial services with no middle men.

          It costs money to handle money. Even with blockchain based system, someone has to pay for the machines that add blocks to the blockchain (usually called "miners"). That means every transaction you do has fees because that money needs to go to the people who keep the network running and maintenance of the blockchain.

          Everything has a cost associated with it. Some companies choose to eat the fees because they

      • > There are a good few far better options that do what ETH have attempted far better, infinitely better in fact, but they don't have a ridiculously large market cap.

        Any examples?

  • As you may have noticed, video cards and high-end processors are both expensive and scares. Most of the problem is from block-chaining. Now, CA, and several states are limiting high-end hardware. They are scapegoated because of miners.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antus ( 6211764 )
      Keep watching for eth 2. That'll be the end of that. Miners say they'll move to another coin with their GPUs, but if eth remains successful and the value of the others stays down, it wont be economical to do so. That looks like how its going to play out. Its not that eth2 will be the first to this - cardano is running on proof of stake now without mining, but eth has the mind share and the market share.

  • Is a "halving" event" similar to a stock split, which, in theory, has no effect on the value of the assets owned?

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