London Hardfork Live! What New EIPs Are Implemented?

Evening

So, today at 12:34 UTC, at Block 12,965,000 the most anticipated Ethereum hardfork dubbed 'London', went live. The backward compatible hardfork brings five changes to the network, EIPs 1559, 3554, 3529, 3198 and 3541.

Here is the brief overview of each change:

EIP 1559

The most hyped part of London hardfork is EIP 1559. Many wrongfully think that EIP 1559 will reduce the transaction fees, however that is not exactly true. Instead EIP 1559 proposed a transaction pricing mechanism to make transactions on Ethereum network more efficient by revamping the gas fees structure. Contrary to current practice of sending gas fees to miners for transaction, EIP 1559 proposes the fee to be sent to network with a minimal called Basefee(to be burnt) and additional tip offered to miner as incentive to prioritize the transaction. Base fee will be set algorithmically making it easier for user to predict the transactions fees and pay a fair price.

EIP 1559 also proposes that the block sizes can fluctuate upto 2x the maximum limit during high network traffic. This flexibility will improve fee market efficiency and help to counter the troubles network's limited transaction throughput and transaction processing speed.

EIP 3554

EIP 3554 essentially paves the way to Eth 2.0, as it delay the 'difficulty time bomb', intended to make mining more difficult, to December this year. The difficulty time bomb also called Ice Age intends to disincentivize miners to switch away from energy extensive 'proof of work' to 'proof of stake', in preparation of switch to Eth 2.0.

EIP 3529

EIP 3529 will reduce gas fee refunds, used to incentivize developers to delete or reduce unused contracts, effectively rendering "gas tokens' useless.

EIP 3198

EIP 3198 is related to EIP 1559 as it introduces BASEFEE opcode. BASEFEE opcode returns the value of base fees at the current block to EVM, making it easier for developers to use base fee at any block, thereby improving services of dapps.

EIP 3541

EIP 3541 is deployed keeping in mind the future upgrades of EVM. It essentially bars deployment of new '0xEF/Executable Format' contracts. It has been put in place because of the implementation of EVM Object Format(EVMOF).

The London hardfork is no doubt exciting but it comes with risks of its own. One of the biggest risk is the majority of nodes not upgrading to the new version, causing a chain split and disruption in block production.

So far by now the market has responded positively with Ethereum prices surpassing $2700, however long terms effects are yet to be seen.

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