The Shielded Labs team, a key developer of Zcash, has published a detailed proposal to introduce a dynamic fee market on the network.
🤔 Why the Change?
Zcash has historically used a static fee model (originally 10,000 zatoshi, then 1,000). This model is no longer sustainable:
- Congestion and Spam: Caused spam issues in the past ("sandblasting") and chain congestion.
- Increase in ZEC Price: With the recent surge in the price of ZEC (the cryptocurrency), the fixed fee becomes too high in terms of ZEC for certain scenarios (like large and small transfers) when demand rises.
🛠️ How Will the New Dynamic Fee Work?
The proposal presents a simple, stateless design based on "comparables":
Base Fee (Standard): It will be calculated as the median of the fee per "action" (transaction component) observed in the last 50 blocks.
- Privacy: To maintain privacy and reduce linkage, this median fee will be grouped in powers of ten.
- During times of high demand or stress, a priority lane will temporarily open with a fee 10 times higher than the standard fee, allowing users to compete for the limited block space.
- It will be implemented in phases: first in off-chain monitoring, then as wallet policy, and finally, as a simple consensus change.
- This design aims to avoid the complexity and risk of forking from more complex mechanisms like Ethereum's EIP-1559, while keeping Zcash's privacy features intact.
📈 Market Reaction
Traders have reacted positively to this specific roadmap for fee reform. ZEC is trading at around $410, with an increase of more than 12% in the last 24 hours.
📌 Do you think this new dynamic fee mechanism is enough to secure the Zcash network and optimize the user experience?
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