Those people who are unhappy with fluctuating gas fees – on Ethereum or any other blockchain, for that matter, are thinking wrong about the future of crypto.
Most of the discussion has been centered on whether Ethereum’s gas fees are too pricey. This year, its fees have become dizzyingly low – partly due to rollups – but spiked during the Aug 4-5 crash. So which is it?
In a rather shocking and unexpected manner, all the items were in fact functioning exactly as they should be. It is a series of events in form of up jumps which you expect of a wholesale market during the high a demand. It is all these that those who point to these as having gone wrong have the wrong vision of where we want the crypto space to be.
Wedded to that, the modular scaling philosophy is grounded in the notion that blockchains are not activity processing networks, they are providers of a scarce object: secure block space. Similar to any other commodity, which is a limited good: (similar to land, oil, electricity) the required secure block space is bought at an auction and is handed over to the individual who requires it most. This will most probably be either a whale or a wholesale buyer like a layer 2.
Monolithic chains have more of a network philosophy: they feel that they should be able to cater for all the clients in equal proportion.