When Ethereum EIP-1559, a core upgrade to Ethereum’s transaction fee structure that introduced a base fee that gets burned and a tip for miners. Also known as Ethereum fee market improvement, it didn’t just tweak fees—it rewrote the economic rules of the network. Before EIP-1559, users guessed what fee to pay, often overpaying during spikes. Now, the network automatically sets a base fee that adjusts block by block based on demand. That fee doesn’t go to miners—it gets destroyed, or "burned," reducing the total supply of ETH over time.
This change created two new concepts most users now interact with: the base fee, the minimum cost to include a transaction, set by the protocol and burned, and the priority fee, a tip users add to incentivize miners to include their transaction faster. Together, they make fee prediction far more predictable. You no longer need third-party tools to guess the right gas price. If the network is quiet, the base fee drops. If it’s crowded, it rises—but never wildly, because the system caps how much a block can expand.
For holders, this meant something bigger: ETH became deflationary. Since August 2021, when EIP-1559 went live, over 5 million ETH have been burned. That’s more than 2.5% of the total supply destroyed—not minted, not sent to wallets, but erased from existence. That’s not hype—it’s math. And it’s happening every single day, whether you’re trading, staking, or just holding.
Miners didn’t love it. Their income dropped because they no longer got the base fee. But they still earn the priority fee, and with Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake, mining is gone anyway. The real winners? Users. DeFi apps. And anyone tired of paying $50 to send $20 worth of ETH. EIP-1559 made Ethereum feel more like a real financial system—not a chaotic auction.
What you’ll find in the posts below isn’t a list of technical papers. It’s real-world examples of how this change echoes through exchanges, tokens, and user behavior. You’ll see how platforms like Dasset and Escodex adjusted their fee displays, how meme coins on Ethereum reacted to fee spikes, and why some DeFi protocols built their own fee structures around EIP-1559’s rules. This isn’t just history—it’s the foundation of how Ethereum works today. And if you’re trading, holding, or just curious, you need to understand it.
Deflationary cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, BNB, and Ethereum use supply-reducing mechanisms to create scarcity. In 2025, their market cap exceeds $850 billion-but not all burns are equal. Here’s what actually drives value.
Oct, 28 2025
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