What is EIP-1559 (London Hard Fork)?
Crypto Glossary Definition
A hard fork of the Ethereum protocol that introduced a change to slow down the issuance of new ETH, and make transaction fees more predictable. Moving forward, a fraction of all transaction fees in each block will now get burned (destroyed). If enough fees are paid in a given day, ETH actually becomes deflationary (the amount in circulation decreases).
Why EIP-1559 (London Hard Fork) Matters
EIP-1559 overhauled how Ethereum gas fees work, introducing a base fee that's burned (permanently removed from supply) rather than paid entirely to validators — this burn mechanism is why Ethereum's supply can actually decrease during periods of high network usage.
EIP-1559 (London Hard Fork) in Practice
A trader checking a gas tracker before submitting a swap notices two numbers instead of one: a base fee, which fluctuates with network demand, and an optional priority tip for validators. This is the direct result of EIP-1559, activated in Ethereum's London upgrade. Suppose the trader submits a transaction during a period of unusually high activity, perhaps a popular NFT mint flooding the network. The base fee spikes, and rather than that extra fee going to a validator, it is burned, permanently removed from the ETH supply. Over the following days, the trader tracks a public ETH burn counter and notices that on the busiest days, more ETH gets burned through fees than is newly issued to validators, making Ethereum's total supply temporarily shrink. On quieter days, issuance outpaces burning and supply grows slightly instead. For the trader, the practical benefit is more predictable fee estimation: wallets can reasonably forecast the base fee a block or two ahead, so transactions are far less likely to get stuck compared to the old first-price auction system, where users guessed at a gas price and often overpaid or had transactions stall entirely during congestion.
Still have questions about EIP-1559 (London Hard Fork)?
Ask ARIA, our free AI crypto intelligence agent, for a deeper explanation.
Ask ARIA →