Ethereum Could Reduce Fees With Batch Transactions

Mike Dalton

Mar. 18, 2021

EIP-3074 could improve Ethereum transaction costs through batching and fee sponsorship.

Ethereum Could Reduce Fees With Batch Transactions

Shutterstock photo by Elena_Dig

Key Takeaways

Ethereum developers have created a proposal that could improve support for transaction batching.
The feature will add the capacity for fee sponsoring and could reduce transaction fees by up to 20%
The proposal could be part of Ethereum's July upgrade or a later update, but this is not guaranteed.

A new Ethereum proposal, EIP-3074, could reduce transaction fees by improving support for batch transactions.

EIP-3074 Could Reduce Fees

Ethereum developer Matt Garnett introduced the proposal on Twitter.

Ethereum wallets may be getting a significant upgrade soon. With the proposed change, EOAs will immediately be able to send batch txs, expiring txs, unordered txs, and more. (thread)

— ً (@lightclients) March 16, 2021

Currently, batch transactions are only available in Ethereum’s smart contracts, meaning the feature is primarily used by DApp and DeFi developers. As the proposal explains, the feature allows a wallet to “become” a smart contract wallet without actually deploying a new smart just to batch transactions.

EIP-3074 is primarily motivated by the need for sponsored transactions—the ability for users to send transactions in which the fees are paid for by another party.

Garnett told Crypto Briefing that the proposal could also indirectly improve fees. “I expect there will be an indirect effect on fees paid by users because the the intrinsic gas cost of a transaction can be amortized across a batch of transactions.” He added that the expected discount is about 20%.

He concluded that this benefit is “only for users who have their transaction relayed by a sponsor who batched transactions from other users – thus dispersing that intrinsic cost.”

When Will Ethereum Add the Feature?

EIP-3074 has been proposed for Ethereum’s London upgrade, which will take place in July. On Friday, it will be determined whether the proposal will be accepted in that upgrade.

The main factor that could prevent the feature from being implemented is a possible attack vector. “If an invoker has a severe security flaw, all accounts that used the invoker in the past would be at risk,” Garnett wrote on Twitter.

Even if the proposal is not introduced in July, the London upgrade will also feature a more notable upgrade: EIP-1559, which will aim to improve fees through fee burning. Ethereum 2.0, as it progresses, will also improve fees through sharding and staking.

For the past several months Ethereum has faced massive congestion, and its average transaction fee is currently $21. As such, it is vital for the Ethereum development community to reduce fees.

At the time of writing this author held less than $75 of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.

EIP-3074 was created by Sam Wilson, Ansgar Dietrichs, Matt Garnett, and Micah Zoltu.

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