Band of Mining Pools Stand Against “Miner-Robbing” Ethereum Update

Several minority mining pools on Ethereum are working together to bring down the implementation of Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559. The proposal was put forward by ETH developers to help curb the network’s outrageous and highly volatile fees. In response, minority pool Flexpool has stood up against the proposal.

Anti-EIP 1559 Miners Threaten to Collude Against ETH Devs

About eight other pools have lent their support to Flexpool in its stance against the proposed EIP 1559. Flexpool is a tiny pool on the Ethereum blockchain, which, in December, had mined only 10 blocks.

And now, the pool is encouraging miners to quit large pools that still support the new Ethereum proposal, such as Sparkpool, which process 24% of Ethereum’s hash power, and F2Pool (11%), and join other minority pools.

According to reports, the pools involved in the insurgency make up about 30% of the Ethereum blockchain’s entire hash rate. In one of its several blog posts, Flexpool advised miners not to remain slaves to mining pools. Furthermore, they had stated that they will “blacklist pools that support robbing miners”.

Alexander Sadovskyi, CEO of Flexpool, pointed out that as of January 14, over 400 miners have joined the pool.

The Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559

The EIP 1559, which has caused a bit of scandal on Ethereum, was first put forward by Vitalik Buterin in 2019, which was purposely delayed at the time due to its complexity. 

It intends to completely upturn the conventional mining reward scheme on the blockchain by proposing the burning of a major part of its transaction fee. One analyst referred to the proposal as “the biggest change to any blockchain post-release.”

The EIP is expected to go live on Ethereum after the Berlin hard fork sometime in February or March this year. 

ETH 2.0 to Put an End to Mining on Ethereum

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that some miners are against the implementation of the EIP 155. However, mining in Ethereum is drawing to a close as the network makes plans to fully deploy its ETH 2.0 upgrade, which was first launched last December 1. The upgrade saw the network move from a PoW to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.

For now, PoW is still alive very much alive on Ethereum. However, it isn’t clear how long they can last. And to a large extent, miners might need to move to other networks in the future. 

And with all the backlash directed towards them, Ethereum developers had pointed out that miners are supposed to serve the network and not the other way round.