Ethereum’s London Upgrade: imToken Support and Need to Knows
Lean back and enjoy the upcoming ‘London’ hardfork of Ethereum
We are supporting the upcoming ‘London’ hardfork in imToken.
The blockchain upgrade brings a couple of new features, mostly for developers and a better user experience. As an imToken user you can simply lean back and enjoy without having to do anything. To learn more about the update, let us introduce you to some details.
Ethereum is upgrading this week
London is not only a city in the United Kingdom. No, it’s also the name of the latest Ethereum network upgrade. It will arrive at block 12,965,000 which should be roughly August 5, 2021.
We can visit https://etherscan.com/block/countdown/12965000 to check the upgrade countdown.
imToken is supporting the London upgrade
We are supporting this upgrade with all imToken apps, and as user, you don’t need to take any action.
London introduces a couple of updates to Ethereum
Technically, this Ethereum upgrade is activated by miners and node providers updating their software. Wallets simply update their nodes, and are ready to go.
This network upgrade includes five changes, namely: EIP-1559, EIP-3198, EIP-3529, EIP-3541, EIP-3554 most of which simply adjust technical details. EIP1559 however was discussed for a long time since it introduces a big change in the way fees on Ethereum work.
Let’s dive into the details.
EIP-1559
EIP-1559 has been discussed a lot lately and is now finally scheduled to be rolled out with this London upgrade.
The reason EIP-1559 has been a hot topic is that it brings a big change to how fees work on Ethereum. First, it aims to make usage fees more predictable, and second, it actually burns ETH as part of the mechanism.
You can read much more about EIP-1559 in this list.
EIP-1559 making fees more predictable
In short, EIP-1559 changes how gas fees work. Currently every user needs to set a Gwei price, and higher paying transactions get included faster.
With ‘London’, that changes. EIP-1559 introduces a “base fee” which will float relatively stable. On top, a user might add a small fee. But thanks to the base fee, the fees should be more stable and more predictable, meaning you should have an easier time to predict how long it will take for your transaction to be included.
Additionally, EIP-1559 adds a new transaction type where users can specify the maximum fee they are willing to pay, along with the maximum they are willing to send to the miner, and get a refund for the difference between that maximum and the base fee and miner tip.
EIP-1559 burns ETH fees
A part of the transaction fees will be burnt, which is something that a large part of the community see as a critical improvement to the Ethereum network’s economics.
After the London upgrade goes online, you will be able to watch how much fees are burned by looking at watchtheburn.com.
Other EIPs introduced in Ethereum’s London upgrade
EIP-3198. EIP-3198 is a necessary technical change enabling EIP-1559. A new BASEFEE ‘opcode’ is added. Opcodes are very low-level instructions that tell the Ethereum world computer what a smart contract wants to do.
EIP-3529. EIP-3529 cancells SELFDESTRUCT’s gas refund and reduced SSTORE’s refund. This mechanism was originally aimed to incentivize developers to clear the state, reducing Ethereum’s size. But it also incentivized Gas Tokens. Since those turned to actually do the opposite of the original goal, i.e. bloating the state, EIP-3529 now adjusts those incentives.
Note: If you hold a gas token, such as Chi, its functionality may become invalid after the upgrade.
EIP-3541. EIP-3541 will make it impossible to deploy new contracts beginning with the 0xEF byte, because that will be used to identify contracts which comply with EIP-3540 semantics.
EIP-3554. EIP-3554 postpones the implementation date of the difficulty bomb to December 2021. The difficulty bomb will “freeze” mining for the gradual transition of Ethereum from PoW to PoS. There were already 3 difficulty bombs in Metropolis (EIP-649), Constantinople (EIP-1234), and Muir Glacier ( EIP-2384).
Read on
More details on:
About imToken: Website | Twitter | Help Center
