ETHEREUM MINERS SAGA
Ethereum miners are staging a rebellion and a protest concerning the EIP-1559 upgrade. On the first of April, they are planning a "show of force" whereby they are going to flip their mining power into one single mining pool achieving more than 51% control of the network.
Although the miners are planning not to maliciously attack the network, they only demonstrate that they have the power and can.
The response to this threat from the miners by the developers Might mean that proof of stake for Ethereum is coming sooner than we expect.
Ethereum miners are not happy about the upcoming Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559. This is the proposed upgrade that will streamline the gas fees and rearrange the auction function. Now we can get more efficient gas fees for users, and it will also introduce a fee burning mechanism that will make Ethereum a deflationary asset over time. The idea is very popular with regular users and Ethereum developers but not with Ethereum miners.
Ethereum fees collected by miners are at an all-time high. In February, miners made 1.37 billion dollars; 52% of that money came from the high fees on Ethereum.
EIP-1559 will cut the fees they earn in half, which means that miners stand to lose about 25% of their income which is about 340 million dollars a month. It is not surprising that they are fighting back against this.
Corporations do not like to lose money, and mining is a corporate game.
The face of Ethereum mining in 2021 is a massive corporate game. Warehouses with hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment invested.
Surprisingly, many other Ethereum mining polls have come out against this upgrade because they make money by taking a 5th percentage of what the miners in their pool make.
At this point, the rebelling miners have enough control to successfully reject this upgrade which could cause a lot of chaos.
Mining rebellions are not entirely new to crypto if we are honest. We have seen this kind of stuff happen a lot over the years. Anytime a proposal that threatens to cut into the bottom line of the wealthy mining cartels comes up, there is a backlash.
The miners will not attack the network; they are not on the users' side. They are only fighting for what they want, indirectly threatening developers to know their place and let them make their profits.
