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Strong opposition to EIP-1559! Miners will conduct a show of force on April 1st, aiming to gather 51% of the hash power for 51 hours.

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Strong opposition to EIP-1559! Miners will conduct a show of force on April 1st, aiming to gather 51% of the hash power for 51 hours.

Some Ethereum miners are organizing a protest against the upcoming EIP-1559. On April 1, they directed their hash power towards the Ethereum mining pool Ethermine for 51 hours as a "show of force" against EIP-1559.

Miners' Show of Force

Having previously written numerous articles on EIP-1559, the proposal that could significantly change the way transaction fees are calculated, impacting aspects such as value capture for ETH, user experience, security, and more, it is also expected to seriously impact miners' profits. Some analysts estimate that Ethereum miners could lose up to 50% of their profits. Therefore, many large Ethereum mining pools have voted against this proposal. Despite this, core developers are determined to implement the proposal in the London hard fork scheduled for July this year, which seems to have angered the Ethereum mining community.

To express strong opposition to the proposal, some Ethereum miners initiated a "show of force" on Twitter, conducting a 51-hour "show of force" on April 1st. This means that on April 1st, miners against the proposal directed their hash power towards the Ethereum pool Ethermine, which opposes EIP-1559, for a total of 51 hours. If Ethermine's hash power exceeds 51%, it will undoubtedly serve as a warning to Ethereum developers.

Consensus Forks and Chain Forks

Blockchain forks can be divided into consensus forks and chain forks. If there is a chain fork but no consensus fork, there will still only be one chain after the hard fork, as seen in Ethereum's past "Istanbul hard fork." However, if there is both a chain fork and a consensus fork, it will result in two chains coexisting, as seen with Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

The intention of this show of force, even if it gathers 51% of the hash power (which may not actually be achieved), is not to attack Ethereum or carry out double-spending (although they have the ability to do so), but rather to warn developers that if they insist on implementing EIP-1559 in the next hard fork, opposing miners have the power to split Ethereum.

Core Developers' Firm Resistance

However, Ethereum core developers seem prepared for the miners' backlash. According to a tweet from the Chinese self-media Wu Said Blockchain, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said last month on WeChat:

"If miners choose to leave, new miners will come in. If miners threaten a 51% attack, we will implement the PoS consensus mechanism as soon as possible."

Furthermore, developers plan to align EIP-1559 with the difficulty bomb in the London upgrade in July to reduce the likelihood of a hard fork.