Let’s stop lying to ourselves about Ethereum fees

– A discussion on Reddit –

Ethereum is one of the most popular and fastest-growing new technologies. But not everything is rosy and active user communities complain about the problems they encounter in their path of adopting the ecosystem. 

Currently, the path to Eth2.0 is planned and moving forward, but there are several obstacles to overcome for Ethereum to improve everything that its users expect and solve their main problems.

The solutions seem to be on the way but users are raising all their current doubts about whether the solutions will work and some do it masterfully in digital communities. 

This is not of little importance since the digital assets themselves are a digital creation, they are nurtured and belong to these digital communities that express their opinion and influence this new world in a profound way and with total freedom of expression. 

Let’s look at some of these community discussions on Reddit, Medium, and others.

The ETH fee problem

What is the reason for the high ETH transaction fee?

Increasingly, as a result of the large number of transactions that have accumulated on networks that use Ethereum, the laws of supply and demand cause the costs of the network to rise, also known as ‘gas fees’.

Ethereum 2.0 is an update that could solve the transaction fees issue, as well as other associated issues, allowing the platform to run faster. The improved speed and lower costs will, in the end, make it easier to use blockchain technology.

Reddit user u/BtcAnonymouse raises the following discussion about Ethereum scalability: 

Can we stop lying to each other? The ETH fee problem cannot be easily solved without more centralization

There is too much misinformation about gasoline prices and it is unproductive and misleading to users, giving them false hope.

Everyone can see for themselves that gas prices are beyond ridiculous. People are losing a lot of money in NFT for failed transactions or paying more in fees than the actual value of the transaction. Disinformation is not helpful.

Some people were hopeful that EIP 1559 would fix gas prices, but it doesn’t. EIP 1559 tried to fix the overpayment by making it easier to estimate fees. It is not an escalation solution or a fee reduction solution.

Now there are posts saying that ETH 2.0 will fix everything. That is once again incorrect information. Switching to POS (NR: Proof of Stake) will not resolve fees or scalability.

On the possible solution of rollups and sidechains:

Sidechains like Matic can fix the fee problem. EVM (NR: Ethereum Virtual Machine) clones like BSC (NR: Binance Smart Chain) can fix it. But as is known, these are completely centralized solutions.

Rollups (or stacks) can fix it. There are two types of rollups. One is the zero knowledge rollup and the other is the optimist. 

Rollups run transactions on a separate chain, compress a batch of transactions and publish it on the main chain. The difference lies in how they test the validity of a batch of transactions.

Zero-knowledge accumulations are very computationally intensive. Optimistic rollups are built on trust and can have vulnerabilities if the value of the transactions is high enough for the bad actor to take advantage of.

The ETH network is already centralized in the first layer due to the nodes and Dapps that depend on Infura. Even Metamask depends on Infura. Infura is a centralized third-party service.

The reality is that there is currently no easy fix for gas prices without adding more centralization and security risks. Let’s try to be honest about it and stop spreading misinformation.

EDIT: Many defensive r/ethereum comments (Note: the Ethereum community on the Reddit social network). Sadly, it’s more misinformation.

I want to remind you that ETH had the same rate problem 4 years ago. It is nothing new.

The Plasma sidechain was touted as the scaling solution for ETH until last year. According to Vitalik, Plasma was going to reach 100,000 TPS (Transactions per second). It was suddenly abandoned after many years of work.

r/ethereum is currently saying that rollups are the scaling solution and no one needs to use the main chain at all. Cumulative packages or rollups also have significant advantages and disadvantages.

If users can only use the second layer, then as I said, it will be a totally trust-based model, like using Facebook apps. Where is the decentralization in that?

I request r/ethereum not to falsely promote future updates that will supposedly solve everything. How many times have they done it before?

ETH does not have a good track record of meeting its roadmap. Plans are changed based on the opinion of a single person. Even the monetary policy of ETH is repeatedly changed. Is that decentralized?

An interesting answer from another user

To make this discussion more interesting, user u/PinkPuppyBall replied:

Can you stop lying? The ETH fee problem is being solved through hard work and without sacrificing decentralization.

5. This will be solved by Layer 2. Many people are working on solutions. (See below) 6. In the future, data chunks [NR: sharding] will significantly reduce fees on these solutions, but not on Layer 1 (Ethereum Layer 1).

The ultimate goal of Ethereum is for users to make almost all of their transactions on Layer 2 solutions. You will be able to buy some ETH on Coinbase, send it through Optimism or Arbitrum to something like Hop, where you can go up to Immutable X to buy an NFT, which you can move to another L2 where you can use it as collateral for a loan.

Examples of Layer 2 solutions are:

• Optimism : can already be used in the alpha phase.
• Arbitrum – Coming in the next few days.
• dYdX – One of the first ever usable perpetual trading platforms.
• Immutable X : already usable NFT market (focused on games).
• Hermez
• azteca
• ZKSync
• Starkware

And as always the (nerdy) humor of Reddit users

Finally, some users take it with humor, responding with a lot of irony and, why not, wisdom. So follow the answers to the discussion. Here’s part of the witty dialogue 😂:

– u/wutnaut

Imagine you finish explaining Ethereum to your grandmother and she buys some. Then you need to explain why you need to switch to a layer 2 solution, otherwise, the gas rates will wipe out your balance. Will this be the normal onboarding experience for new users? Unacceptable! #NotMyGrandma (#nomiagrandma) »

– in/MajesticMetaphor :

“Yes. Everyone says there are solutions on the way. All you have to do is move ETH to layer 2, switch to an NFT, hold for 3 days, and then wait for the sun to reach noon on the third Saturday after the summer equinox, and then boom, 1/2 of the gas rates. »

– u/wutnaut

“So I’ve been performing a blood ritual for nothing ?!”

😂😂😂

Is Ethereum really decentralized, secure and transparent?

Whether the issues of decentralization and scalability have been settled or not, we don’t know. It seems that the discussion has only just begun, but what is certain is that reditters do not miss one. 

Find the original discussion on Reddit here

By Juan Mende . Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash .