Ethereum EIP1559 Testnet Block Set

The fee burning ethereum upgrade, known as Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 is set to have its first testnet block on Ropsten this June 24th at block number 10499401.

That’s according to Tim Beiko, the ethereum 1.0 coordinator, who after a dev call stated:

“With all clients comfortable with their 1559 implementation, we agreed it made sense to set testnet blocks now. Some of the JSON RPC changes mentioned at the beginning may come after the testnet forks, but all the consensus-related changes for 1559 are ready to go!”

A week after, the Proof of Authority (PoA) Goerli testnet is to be forked at block number 5062605 on June 30th, followed by a further fork of Rinkeby on July the 7th.

All are testnets, meaning they emulate the live ethereum network, but with fake eth coins, to test in a fairly identical environment just how the upgrade would perform on the actual network.

If all goes well, then the process of upgrading the live network will begin, with Beiko stating:

“The mainnet block will be chosen after we see testnets forking smoothly, and hence will require another client upgrade.”

Some suggest this may go live on mainnet by the end of July, next month, but looking at the testnet dates that may be a bit tight, with a more reasonable best estimate being sometime in August.

That’s if all goes well on the testnets of course with any unexpected discoveries there naturally causing potential delays, but this fee burning upgrade is now at the final stages prior to a live launch.

EIP1559 as you might know changes the algorithm to set fees at such a level that there is 50% extra capacity, with it setting a base fee that is burned.

The upgrade itself also doubles the gas limit, so adding a bit of capacity to the ethereum network, with the fee burning further potentially reducing total supply during highly congested periods at a rate of about $50 million a day.

So affecting both the network technically and ethereum as an investment asset with this now just weeks away.