Ethereum London Fork - Environmental Implications
As many will be aware with the high gas fees being seen on the ethereum blockchain, Vitalik Buterin has promised the implementation of the London Hard Fork or EIP1559 at some point soon in the summer. But what exactly is the London Hard fork? What does it mean for the miners? And what environmental implications will this have?
EIP 1559 has long been in the public eye as it is the main upcoming change to the network that will allow the blockchain to become more user friendly and energy efficient. In depth detailed information on the London Hard Fork can be found online and Vitalik Buterin has lots of open sourced information available to read. I am however hoping to just scratch the surface from an environmental standpoint to help you understand once again the power of blockchain technology in helping improve energy efficiencies. EIP 1559 in theory in moving the network from a proof of work system to a proof of stake system.
Proof of Work (POW) requires larger amounts of energy, with miners needing to sell their coins to ultimately foot the bill; Proof of Stake (POS) gives mining power based on the percentage of coins held by a miner. This in turn means that there is less energy used within the transaction processes within a block chain that is POS. The Ethereum hard fork is in place to move from POW to POS therefor making the blockchain faster and more energy efficient. POS makes Ethereum less susceptible in the long run to miner manipulations which as I am sure you have seen over recent months is causing a stir amongst the Ethereum mining communities. Unlike POW, validators don't need to use significant amounts of computational power because they're selected at random and aren't competing. They don't need to mine blocks; they just need to create blocks when chosen and validate proposed blocks when they're not. So EIP1559 will in turn reduce competition between miners, run smoother and more energy efficiently, also in the future this will reduce gas fees across the blockchain to help further adoption into the future.
One of the main criticisms coming from media and investors alike, is that they want to ensure the blockchain they are using is headed toward a more sustainable future on earth. This EIP is a prime example of Ethereum's vision to improve on societys wrong doings on the past and commit to an ethical future alongside the user experience. However as always the reduced gas fees will be main news when the improvements take place, don't forget the fact that using an Ethereum transaction will be much more environmentally friendly than bitcoin or other POW blockchains
While EIP-1559 is a major upgrade and will provide vast improvements to the Ethereum blockchain, it is not complete fix. The upgrade will make transactions more efficient, but it will not fix network bloat because it is not a scaling solution. (it will however create a better baseline for sharding which we will talk about at a future date) What it will do, however, is improve user experience by making gas fee prediction easier. Neither will users have to worry about transactions getting stuck in the mempool for long periods. EIP 1559 aims to smooth out Ethereum gas fee volatility while helping users better estimate their transaction rates and times
In conclusion the Ethereum network will use less energy overall and is going to run smoother for all levels of user on blockchain. It will definitely reduce the energy consumption needed to support the network moving forward. However there is more opportunity in the future to make the Ethereum network even more energy efficient and environmentally friendly so to speak, I look forward to see the future of Ethereum and how efficient the network will become with all its future users.