Ethereum developers have identified a vulnerability in the EIP-1559 project that could lead to network congestion. This was told by the participant of the Ethereum Foundation Tim Beiko.
The EIP-1559, presented in 2018, involves the burning of some of the transaction fees and helps to reduce the volatility of the gas price. The offer also allows users to "tip" miners to speed up the confirmation of transactions.
Developer Martin Holst Svendé found that EIP-1559 does not set a ceiling on the maximum amount of such payments. This would allow an attacker to enter an absurdly large number to overload the network, even if he does not have the means to pay.
“Before EIP-1559, this was not possible, because if you want to create a transaction with a huge gas price, you need to have the specified amount of ETH. If your transaction is included in the block, you will pay this amount,” explained Beiko.
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The developers have fixed the vulnerability by adding the code suggested by Svend. Some clients have already implemented the solution.
The controversial EIP-1559 received support from developers and users, but divided miners into two camps.
Opponents of the proposal, including the SparkPool and Ethermine pools that jointly control 44.8% of the network hashrate, wanted to concentrate more than 51% of the computing power in the latter. However, their attempt failed.
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EIP-1559 will be part of the London hard fork scheduled for July 2021.