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- Ethereum’s miners aren’t happy with EIP-1559 which will drastically cut down the revenues they earn from gas fees.
- They plan on directing 51% hash power on April 1 to Ethermine, a mining pool opposed to the upgrade as a “show of force.”
A group of Ethereum miners opposed to a proposed upgrade intends on diverting their hash power to one mining pool on April 1 in a show of protest. The miners oppose Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 which could drastically cut down their profits. The movement by the miners started on social media where they have been drumming up support for their “show of force.”
For educational purposes, let's collectively move our hash to https://t.co/6osh2Op6yl April 1st for 51 hours. @etherchain_org @BitsBeTrippin @SonOfATech @maxvoltage @SavageMine @VoskCoin @Nemisist2 @notyournormalm1 @BrandonCoin1 @GuntisVitolins #eip1559 #stopeip1559 #Ethereum
— Red Panda Mining (@RedPandaMining) March 7, 2021
EIP-1559 is a proposal by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and others to change the fee structure in the network. It proposes that rather than paying gas fees to miners, a user will send the fee to the Ethereum network as a base fee. The network will then ‘burn’ this fee, “deleting it out of existence,” as Buterin recently put it. Users can still pay fees to miners, but this will now be optional, more like a tip.
As CNF reported, the upgrade is set for July as part of the London hard fork. Buterin, its core proponent stated in a recent podcast:
And so if the demand to use Ethereum is high enough, then there would actually be more ETH being destroyed than is being created. And so the joke that I would sometimes make is, if Bitcoin knows if fixed supply is sound money, then if you have a decreasing supply, does that make us some ultrasound money?
Miners disagree with Buterin
EIP-1559 will be very beneficial to Ethereum users, finally ridding the network of the outrageously high fees. However, for the miners, this would mean losing their biggest revenue stream. These miners have not taken this well and are planning a revolt against the upgrade.
What is your opinion on the controversial EIP-1559 which is supposed to improve UX & burn a majority of the transaction fee instead of giving it to miners for securing the network ⛏️?#Ethermine is an open pool and will, as always, represent the opinion of its individual miners!
— Bitfly (@etherchain_org) January 15, 2021
Michael Carter, an Ethereum miner explained the revolt on his popular YouTube channel, Bits Be Trippin.
Part of this is a show of force. […] This isn’t for us to try and take down Ethereum, this is purely on the grounds of protecting Ethereum because we’ve all been mining it since 2015.
Carter pointed out that this is a disagreement between the miners, the developers and the investors. While the miners may get all the blame, he believes that all three groups have played a part. To avoid an unfortunate scenario in which the Ethereum network is prone to attacks, he urged the three groups to reach a compromise, fast. Carter further clarified that the miners aren’t out to attack the Ethereum network, even when they secure more than 51% of the hash power.
“That pool (Ethermine) is not going to attack the network. There’s no incentive for them to attack the network,” he told his 55,000 subscribers.
Other miners have reiterated this point, stating that destabilizing the Ethereum network isn’t their aim. One stated on Twitter:
If miners were looking to actually damage Ethereum, we’d be coordinating the sudden change of where we directed our hash power to a different project altogether such as Ravencoin instead of consolidating hash power to a single pool.
