Vitalik Buterin proposed a new Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP-7706) on the code hosting platform GitHub on the 13th, aiming to introduce a new type of gas for transaction calldata. Farcaster, a decentralized social protocol, expressed the hope that this proposal would make the discussion on “multi-dimensional gas” more concrete.
The EIP-7706 proposal and its motivations were mentioned in the proposal. This transaction type will provide max_basefee and priority_fee in vector form, suitable for three types of gas: “execution gas,” “blob gas,” and “calldata gas.” It will also modify the EIP-1559 proposal to ensure that the three types of gas adopt the same mechanism.
Currently, the main argument against Ethereum increasing gas limits, reducing calldata costs, and increasing Blob count is that the theoretical maximum space of Ethereum blocks is already too large to bear further cost increases. Therefore, EIP-7706 is introduced to introduce a separate gas market for calldata. In theory, the calldata size will be significantly reduced, and the average calldata cost will also be greatly reduced.
Prior to proposing EIP-7706, Vitalik Buterin mentioned the concept of “multi-dimensional gas” in his latest blog post. He used Blobs after the Dencun upgrade as a practical example of multi-dimensional gas and discussed the benefits and prospects of this concept.
The concept of multi-dimensional gas can limit and charge storage access separately, ensuring the average access volume of each block. It also sets limits for each block to improve network security and efficiency.
Multi-dimensional gas can adjust gas fees for different issues without affecting Ethereum’s security, rather than adjusting based on the maximum usage of each block.
In a single-dimensional gas system, the gas cost of a transaction is determined by the gas consumed by both data and computation. However, in a multi-dimensional gas system, the gas cost can be determined based on the main resources consumed by the transaction. This approach improves throughput while maintaining security.
Multi-dimensional EIP-1559 adjusts the base fee of blobs through tracking the excess_blobs parameter to ensure that the average usage of blocks remains at the target level. When a block contains more blobs than the target value, the base fee increases to reduce usage, and vice versa. This pricing mechanism allows for dynamic adjustment of transaction prices within blocks to maintain a half-filled state. Trigger limit mechanisms are also set to ensure reasonable competition for transactions.
Finally, Vitalik Buterin added that once multi-dimensional gas is introduced, the complexity of the system will significantly increase. Therefore, Ethereum faces a complex choice of whether to accept more complexity on the EVM in exchange for the scalability of Layer2.