Vitalik Buterin says 'more still needs to be done' over high Ethereum txn fees

In a caller blog station published connected Feb. 28, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin documented the continued request to amended the namesake web to amended facilitate ETH arsenic a means of payment. In 1 instance, Buterin shared however helium tried to wage for beverage for himself and friends astatine a java store successful Argentina successful 2021, but had to wage 0.01 ETH (around $40 astatine the time) arsenic that was the minimum deposit for the owner's speech account. "I did not caput the 3x overpayment and treated it arsenic a tip," the co-founder wrote. 

In different instance, Buterin explained however how helium tried to wage for beverage astatine different determination successful 2022, but 2 abstracted transactions failed owed to requiring "extra state to process the transfer" and a UI glitch successful his mobile wallet. Furthermore, Buterin besides raised the contented of unpredictable transaction times, writing:

"Many times, determination has been a amazingly agelong clip hold betwixt my transaction getting accepted on-chain, and the work acknowledging the transaction, adjacent arsenic "unconfirmed." Some of those times, I decidedly got disquieted that determination was immoderate glitch with the outgo strategy connected their side."

As told by Buterin, outliers nevertheless stay connected the Ethereum web contempt caller improvements. "If you nonstop a transaction astatine the aforesaid clip arsenic erstwhile galore others are sending transactions and the basal interest is spiking up, you hazard the basal interest going excessively precocious and your transaction not getting accepted," helium wrote. "Even worse, wallet UIs suck astatine showing this. There are nary large reddish flashing alerts, and precise small wide denotation of what you're expected to bash to lick this problem." Buterin added that adjacent experts tin beryllium confused astatine however to velocity up transactions successful specified cases.

"A UI that is cleanable and sleek, but does immoderate weird and unexplainable happening 0.723% of the clip that causes large problems, is worse than a UI that exposes much gritty details to the idiosyncratic but astatine slightest makes it easier to recognize what's going connected and hole immoderate occupation that does arise."

Among different issues, Buterin raised the occupation of the net being "not 100% reliable," and the request for imaginable offline proofs that customers so transfered their transaction information straight to the merchant. Another contented raised was "losing a tiny magnitude of BTC and ETH," owed to secret-sharing-based off-chain societal betterment methods for wallets, which Buterin deemed arsenic fragile. According to YCharts, Ethereum transaction fees person fallen to an mean of $0.656 astatine the clip of publication, which is overmuch little than the mean of $20 witnessed during the highest of the crypto bull marketplace successful 2021.

"Along with the all-important contented of precocious transaction fees owed to scaling not yet being afloat solved, idiosyncratic acquisition is simply a cardinal crushed wherefore galore Ethereum users, particularly successful the Global South, often opt for centralized solutions alternatively of on-chain decentralized alternatives that support powerfulness successful the hands of the idiosyncratic and their friends and household oregon section community."

Ethereum median waiting times of artifact transactions. Source: Vitalik Buterin; Yinhong Zhao, Kartik Nayak