Interpreting the CSR protocol EIP-6969: Will it once again change the Ethereum economic model?

陈剑Jason

2023-05-15 11:18

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Original Title: "EIP6969's CSR Protocol May Change Ethereum's Economic Model Again, Worth Paying Attention To"

Original Source: jason, Do You Understand This World Better Today?

Test everyone, do you remember when was the last time the Ethereum economic model was changed?

On August 5th, 2021, London upgraded and EIP1559 officially took effect. Each Gas fee will be divided into two parts: the basic network fee and the miner's tip. The network fee will be burned directly, while before this, all Gas fees went to the miners. Therefore, EIP1559 will officially bring Ethereum into the era of deflation. Currently, 3,278,061 ETH worth $6 billion have been burned.

EIP1559 was originally proposed and "strongly pushed" by Vitalik. The reason for the strong push was that although it was good for the entire Ethereum economic system, it was also obvious that it greatly affected the interests of miners. However, Ethereum is more centralized compared to Bitcoin, so at that time, major mining pools were strongly opposed, but it was still implemented. If it were Bitcoin, a highly decentralized public chain where miners have the power of speech, it would probably not be pushed through. Of course, in addition to deflationary value, EIP1559 also has a regulating effect on the difficult-to-predict and nauseating growth of Gas. Prior to this, the order of block packaging was determined by Gas fee bidding, whoever bid higher would be packaged first, which made it difficult for users to predict Gas fees and caused Gas to grow infinitely. EIP1559 splits Gas into two parts, basic network fees and miner tips, which helps to solve this problem.

And just six days ago, Ethereum core developer and Slingshot CTO zkCole proposed EIP6969, which was discussed in the latest Ethereum core developer execution layer meeting as to whether it could be included in the upcoming Cancun upgrade. https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-6969-generalized-csr-protocol/14178

EIP6969 is a modified version of EIP1559, which proposes a new gas fee allocation mechanism that allows a portion of the gas to be given to contract developers who interact with it. The gas will be divided into three parts: network base fees for burning, tips for rewarding miners, and fees for rewarding contract developers.

This protocol is also called Contract Secured Revenue (CSR). When you read this, you may feel a little familiar. In an article I wrote earlier this year, "Talking about the application chain that I think will be lively this year", I mentioned the Defi application chain Canto, which was issued on Cosmos and saw a tenfold increase in price in a month. It adopts the CSR model, and I suggest you revisit this article.

The value of EIP6969 lies in the more "reasonable" distribution of Ethereum's income to contributors. Before this, the Gas income of public chains was all given to miners, after all, miners are the most core group that maintains the network security operation and the foundation of the entire network, so they need to be given enough rewards. However, Gas is paid by users, and the reason why users have to pay Gas is to interact with contracts. As contract developers who directly face users to "collect money", they have not earned this fee at all. Developers can only make money by issuing Tokens or charging users more for value-added services. EIP6969 implements the "creator economy" to reward contract developers who truly create value for active users on the chain. It is also these contracts that generate more Gas to feed miners. As long as your contract is continuously interacted by users, you can continuously earn profits, thereby stimulating the entire ecosystem to find ways to create more excellent products to attract users to generate on-chain behavior.

However, Gitcoin co-founder Owocki believes that EIP6969 is not suitable for Layer1. He believes that Layer1 should remain neutral and not favor one party over another, achieving sufficient cleanliness and purity. Instead, Layer2 is more suitable. As I mentioned before, Ethereum's ultimate goal is to become a bottom-level chain that no longer directly interacts with users or runs applications, only responsible for data availability and consensus, leaving the rest to Layer2 to complete. Therefore, logically speaking, since EIP6969 is intended to reward application contract developers who interact with it, it is more reasonable to place it on Layer2.

Currently, EIP6969 is still in the very early stage of research and development, but it is a proposal that is worth keeping an eye on. Once implemented, it will again change the economic model of Ethereum, and will have a significant impact on the two core groups of Web3, developers and miners, bringing them great benefits.

Please note that all opinions expressed in this article are personal and do not constitute investment advice. If you have different opinions, welcome to exchange and discuss.