Ethereum London Hardfork, EIP-1559 to go Live on Ropsten Network in 5 Hours

The London Hardfork, also known as EIP 1559 is set to go live on the Ropsten Testnet network in less than 5 hours. The launch on Ropsten is the first of the three proposed testnets the London upgrade is set to debut before the mainnet launch. The mainnet launching is slated for July, at a date, the Ethereum Foundation will announce once the testnets forks successfully.

The Ethereum Improvement Protocol is set to go live at block number 10499401, a time estimated to be on June 24th. The launch of the EIP 1559 upgrade on the Ropsten network will be succeeded by the activation of the upgrade on the Goerli Network at block number 5062605, with a schedule to go live on June 30th. The Rinkeby Testnet is slated for July 7th, after attaining block number 8897988.

Following these, the block number and the proposed date of launch for the Mainnet launch will be set.

Need for Ethereum EIP-1559 Upgrade

The Ethereum blockchain is one of the most used networks for smart contracts and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. The current transaction fee model has been tagged as unstainable, as periods of high network activity can lead to bogus fees being paid by users. The skyrocketing gas fees at a time became a barrier and birthed a number of competitions for the Ethereum blockchain.

While awaiting the proposed Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network or Ethereum 2.0, the EIP 1559 upgrade was proposed to serve as a temporary overhaul to the fee challenge.

Under the new improvements, a base fee will be charged per block, compared to the former model in which miners typically set their fees. 

Ropsten miners and Goerli/Rinkeby validators will need to expand their gas limits to twice what they used to be. “This is because once London is live, the block size will be doubled and EIP-1559 will keep blocks about 50% full,” according to Tim Beiko in a blog post shared recently. The half capacity of blocks will also prevent congestion, and ultimately, the incidence of high fees.