With rising Ethereum fees, Vitalik Buterin warned on Twitter that this trend could pose a security risk to the platform
As decentralized finance expands and use of the Ethereum network grows, the platform’s transaction fees have climbed. The total number of transactions has returned to levels similar to those seen in 2018.
Transaction fee revenue on Ethereum is now approaching nearly half of the income generated by block rewards. According to Ethereum co‑founder Vitalik Buterin, this shift could weaken the network’s security over time.
Buterin suggests that Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 could help address the problem by changing how market fees are handled on the ETH 1.0 chain.
Transaction fees reach 100 Gwei
Ethereum gas prices have already reached about 100 Gwei, which corresponds to 0.00000010 ETH per unit. Crypto figures such as Ryan Sean Adams and Buterin have called for changes to the fee model.
The fee increases are already affecting the network: niche sectors like blockchain games and various dApps have seen activity slow. For games and applications that rely on low‑value, high‑volume transactions, higher fees directly impact their business models.
Network congestion earlier in 2020 caused gas prices to rise by roughly 10 Gwei in June, climbing from 30 to 40 Gwei and then more than doubling over the next six weeks.
Buterin pointed to a Princeton University paper that disputes the notion that miners compensated only by block rewards or transaction fees have no influence on blockchain security.
EIP‑1559: simplifying software requirements and improving pricing efficiency
The change proposed by Buterin and his team would replace the current first‑price auction fee mechanism with a method that adjusts a base fee according to network demand.
Under this approach, network capacity could increase up to 16 million gas, while the base fee would rise once demand surpasses a 10 million gas threshold. The proposal also allows users to include optional tips for miners, while the base fee would be burned to prevent miners from manipulating fees for profit.
Implementation of the change would occur in two stages. The first stage would gradually reduce legacy gas usage while increasing the new gas mechanism, and the second stage would stop the network from accepting legacy transactions altogether.