Ethereum upgrade vaguely explained *come for the moons, stay for the learns*

You've probably seen a lot of comments, posts and news articles about the eth update. Maybe read things that say things like "London hard fork" and "FIRST 100 BURNING!" maybe you even nodded along and pretended you know what we're talking about to fit in. So here's the quickest and simplest explanation. Regulars feel free to come elaborate or correct me, I'm just trying to condense and simplify it.

Think iOS update, it's a software upgrade. It's needed mainly because it's got insane and unpredictable fees, the popularity of NFTs have poured gasoline on this fire and made the flaws all the more obvious.

More details for big readers: Five new Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). 1559, 3541, 3198, 3529 and 3554 are code upgrades. What people are most chatty about is EIP-1559

EIP-1559 is intended to make transaction fees more predictable, it has pros and a lot of cons for miners but I won't get into that. Prior to this, Eth users would place bids to get their transactions in new blocks. The cost would fluctuate significantly during busy periods. Some wallet hosts tried to combat this and offer different fee options, with confirmation times that could last many hours.

So users would bid higher amounts to get their shit done.

​

Images aren't mine

EIP-1559 is supposed to simplify this by calculating a base fee for a block in advance. The base fee will get burned and the miner can earn a tip (think: Uber)

​

images aren't mine

It is very unlikely that we find eth is noticeably cheaper to move, but it will take the guess work out. The community is a little torn on opinions because there is so much to consider, the rise in price doesn't really speak to anything except uncertainty. A main point of disagreement is potentially deflationary pressure with the burning base fee (less supply = more valuable assumption) however, it looks like it's going to balance out and just be slower growth, not backwards growth overall.

Opinion: I think the media got a little carried away and in turn — the people, it's not the first upgrade, it doesn't solve all the issues, and it won't be the last. However, I am still long-term investing in ETH and expect an impressive future. It's just a little more in-depth than simply ETH TO THE MOON I would just hate for peoples (false) expectations to get too high and then feel like the whole thing was a bust when it doesn't flip BTC next week. It's a big step in a direction.