Multi-chain coupling shrinks safe EIP-1559 fee update rates
Original title: On the (In)stability of Adaptive Fee Mechanisms in Multi-Chain Systems
Cross-chain delay cuts the safe base-fee update space by up to 84.8% and can destabilize otherwise stable peer chains.
A paper models multi-chain transaction fee markets as a nonlinear system with delayed feedback and identifies delay-amplified over-correction as the source of instability. Experiments find cross-chain coupling erodes stability relative to a single chain. At Ethereum's update rate, the multi-chain system oscillates between full and near-empty blocks. The authors say mainstream Cosmos chains already exceed safe bounds under default settings and propose a protocol-level mitigation.
Unconfirmed: Stability losses and the 84.8% reduction are experimental results from the authors' model, not observed mainnet incidents.
- Polkadot uses conservative update rates that effectively disable fee adaptivity.
- Cosmos uses aggressive update rates without formal stability guarantees.
- Over half of blocks are at full capacity in the multi-chain Ethereum-rate case.
- Load oscillation raises Cosmos block failure rates by an order of magnitude, the authors report.
From the original article
1 min read at arxiv.orgEIP-1559 has become the dominant transaction fee mechanism in permissionless blockchains, regulating scarce block space through an adaptive base fee. The design balances a trade-off between responsiveness to demand fluctuations and stability of long-term resource usage. On a single chain, this trade-off is well understood and empirically stable.
By Yifan Zhou · arxiv.org
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