Ethereum: How can the next block fee be less than the mempool purging fee rate?

Ethereum Growth: How to Lower Block Fee Rates and Promote a More Efficient Blockchain

As the world’s largest decentralized application (dApp) platform, Ethereum has come under increasing scrutiny for its scalability limitations. One major contributing factor to this problem is its high block fee rate, which has led to an overload of the memory pool—a temporary storage facility where pending transactions are stored. In this article, we will explore why the current block fee rates are unsustainable and propose strategies to reduce them.

The Problem: High Block Fee Rates

Currently, Ethereum’s block size limit is capped at 14,500 KB, which equates to about 300 MB (3 gigabytes) per block. However, the memory pool is growing exponentially, with some reports suggesting that it has exceeded the default 300 MB limit several times over. This congestion has led to a slew of issues, including:

• Transaction Congestion: High transaction demand in the mempool can lead to delays and bottlenecks as the system struggles to process all pending transactions.

• Block Size Limit: As transaction volume increases, it becomes increasingly difficult for the block size limit to keep up with the growing demand.

Mempool Clearing: A Key Example

To illustrate this point, let’s look at a recent example of a clear mempool that exceeded the default 300MB limit. As reported on the Bitcoin subreddit, most transactions in the mempool were made up of large batches or “consolidations” — essentially a single transaction being split into smaller chunks to make it easier for the system to process.

These consolidated transactions can be quite size intensive, and here are a few examples:

• 1.5 satoshi per byte (vB): This means that each consolidated transaction takes up about 1,500 bytes of memory.

• 1.5 satoshi per second (sat/s): By clearing the memory pool, this translates to a whopping 3,000 transactions being processed simultaneously.

Why Lower Block Fee Rates Matter

Reducing block fee rates can have a number of benefits for Ethereum’s scalability and usability:

• Increased transaction throughput: Lower block fees mean that more transactions can be processed per second.

• Improved performance: With lower fees, users will experience faster transaction times and shorter waiting times between blocks.

• Better User Experience: Faster processing times will result in a more positive user experience, with fewer delays and bottlenecks.

Proposing Solutions

To address the issue of high block fee rates and promote a more efficient blockchain, consider the following proposals:

• Increasing the Block Size Limit: Raising the block size limit can help alleviate congestion in the memory pool.

• Implementing a Tiered Pricing System: Offering different block fees for different types of transactions (e.g. small and large) can encourage developers to create smaller, more frequent transactions.

• Investing in Memory and Storage Improvements

  : Increasing available memory and storage capacity can help alleviate congestion in the memory pool.

• Optimizing Transaction Batching: Encouraging developers to batch process transactions can reduce the number of individual transactions processed per block.

Conclusion

The Ethereum blockchain is facing increasing challenges due to high block fees that limit the scalability and usability of the network. By implementing solutions such as increased block size limits, pricing systems, memory upgrades, and optimized transaction batch processing, we can work towards creating a more efficient and user-friendly blockchain.