EIP-1559 Miner FAQ

Why not give base_fee to current block miner?

1. If the miner of the block received the base_fee, then there would be effectively no change with EIP-1559. Miners would still be able to include their own transactions at no cost to fill a block. Miners would be able to offer rebates to users for transaction fees via secondary channels, thus allowing them to effectively include transactions priced below the base_fee. See section 5.3 of http://timroughgarden.org/papers/eip1559.pdf for a much more technically deep answer.
2. If miner fees from transactions for a block relative to the block reward are high, selfish mining attack vectors open up (see: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/research/techreps/TR-983-16). By not giving the base_fee to the block miner, we mostly (but not fully) mitigate this attack vector and greatly mute the problems this vector has on the blockchain.

Why not give base_fee to future/past block miners?

1. The security needs of the blockchain don't coorelate with block space demand. Ethereum doesn't need more security during times when block space demand is high, and thus fees are high (like late 2020). Inversely, it doesn't need less security in times when block space demand is low (like early 2020).
2. If it is decided that we need more security, we can increase the block reward which is slightly lower complexity and doesn't result in a variable level of security based on block space demand. A block reward increase also allows miners to more reasonably reason about their ROI due to having a stable block reward.
3. Since block space demand is not something we can control, it tends to be very volatile. It has a high amount of seasonality (daily, weekly, yearly variance) and it is very sensitive to external events that can result in significant changes in demand over time. In order to have stable network security, we want the amount we pay security providers to be stable. By giving miners transaction fees, we are creating an instability in the network security budget, which results in an instability in security.
4. It is more difficult to analyze any potential perverse incentives when distributing transaction fees like this. While this alone isn't a strong argument against introducing a change, it is generally preferrable to use an easy to analyze solution over a hard to analyze solution when both are available.

Why not increase the block reward?

The block reward is used to attract a certain amount of hashpower to Ethereum. The exact amount of hashpower needed to secure the chain against secret fork chain mining attacks (e.g., double spend attacks) is an incredibly complex and possibly even chaotic topic that is out of scope for this document. If it is desired though, the change is very low complexity and easy to implement.

The first step in crafting an EIP that increases the block reward is to show why additional chain security is necessary.

EIP-1559 encourages 51% censorship attacks

51% censorship attacks are possible today and they are immensely profitable (over doubles the mining reward for the participating 51%). EIP-1559 may make such attacks marginally more profitable, but it is by a fairly small amount and not enough to significantly increase the risk of censorship attacks on its own.

Reducing pay of miners will cause them to revolt

Paying miners less after a fork than before a fork may upset miners to the point where they vindictively execute a 51% censorship attack against Ethereum, such as one that prevents EIP-1559 from being effective.

Any censorship attack by miners against the interest of users will almost certainly result in the core developers taking very aggressive action against miners. The most likely retaliation that the core devs could execute would be a rush to launch Proof of Stake, which would completely remove all miners/mining from Ethereum.

The core developers would prefer to roll out Proof of Stake slowly/iteratively, releasing little bits at a time and testing them in production before releasing the next piece. They would also like to roll it out in a particular order, such as implementing withdraws before moving to the full proof of stake. However, these are not hard requirements and in the face of an attack by miners against Ethereum things could be re-prioritized such that Proof of Stake is launched much sooner than originally planned.

If Proof of Stake was launched on an accelerated timeline, miners would lose money over the long run compared to any gains they made by an attack. For example, if miners were able to double their fee revenue via a 51% attack and Proof of Stake then launched in 1/3 of the original time, the attacking miners would end up losing more than they gain due to their hardware value going to epsilon much sooner than if they rode Ethereum mining all the way through the slow PoS rollout.

1559 will reduce miner pay, thus reduce security

Fee revenue for miners was effectively nil relative to the block reward back in early 2020, and it was even lower when this EIP was originally introduced. It also has been close to 0 (relative to the block reward) for most of the time since the block reward was last changed. This EIP only significantly reduces security relative to late 2020 levels, it doese not significantly reduce security relative to any other point in history since the last block reward adjustment.

There is nothing that is fundamentally different about Ethereum today than Ethereum in early 2020 (or before) that would lead us to believe we need more security now than previously. This leads us to the default assumption that demand related transaction fees going to miners is unnecessary additional security that we can afford to stop paying.

Reducing miner rewards will centralize mining

TODO: fill this out with more details and better claims/rebuttals

Argument: Thin margin hashing power tends to respond slow to reward changes while wide margin hashing power tends to respond quickly. It is believed that wide margin hashing power is more decentralized as it is more likely to be home miners than farm miners. We recently saw a large increase in miner reward, which brought on a lot of wide margin miners, thus helping decentralize the network. If we undo this reward, we will see hashing power move back toward centralization.

Rebuttal: Mining naturally centralizes over time due to economies of scale.