The Race for BlockSpace
Scarlet Saturday: 2 of the most used blockchains Solana and Ethereum became *unusable*
Context
ETH became *unusable* because it costs too much gas (1.5 ETH) to do anything as APEs bid for high gas to mint Otherdeed land
◎ Solana on the other hand got spam >100Gbps so bad by NFT bots for block space that the network had to shut down and restart
BlockSpace as a commodity
Blockspace has different values depending on the chains you are in ( i.e. more valuable on ETH and less on Fantom, etc)
Blockspace is valued differently based on Time (more valuable during NFT mint, congestion, etc)
ETH and SOL have 2 very distinct BlockSpace types to solve the BlockSpace race.
ETH: BlockSpace- type L, limited supply, price(gas fees) scale according to demand
◎ SOL: BlockSpace- type U, unlimited supply, more demand increases BlockSpace supply instead of price
Limited BlockSpace (Type L) :
Advantages
Bots are penalized (limit spam)
Anyone can send transactions through albeit paying the market price for Blockspace
Disadvantage:
Surge pricing during congestion
scalability (can be solved with Rollup)
Unlimited BlockSpace (Type U) :
Advantages:
- more scalability
- flat fees
Disadvantage:
- bots will literally take down the network to mint JPEG
Why can't you have both cheaper fees and more block space?
A lot of these have to do with making tradeoffs in the Transaction Quality Dilemma, outlined here
Would a new L1 solve gas wars?
Unlikely This is a problem of paying a higher fees so your transaction gets prioritized and not a problem of sending any transaction through As long as the cost of mint fits the budget, people will still pay higher gas
Could Otherdeed design a better mint mechanic?
The short answer is yes - Dutch Auction and Long sale duration are designed to prevent gas wars
long answer why?- what better narrative than *ETH can't support our Blockspace demand, we need new L1*
Broke: Use Dutch Auction
Woke: Caused Gas Wars to promote new L1 *Your users can't afford to burn money, mine can.*
We are not the same
* this is a joke btw, don't take it too seriously
Back to SOL◎
Solana is having this problem because there are no effective fees market. bots are literally spamming with no penalty
On Eth, you at least still pay high gas for failed transactions.
How does Solana plan to solve this problem?
solution:
limit spam: QUIC -> TLDR; Rate Limit Spam
introducing per account fee market: NFT mint will only cause surge pricing for NFT mint and not for other users
BlockSpace as a commodity is a new thesis currently in development. It will likely play a significant role in the near future but may be too early for now. There are other factors that play a role here as well MEV, Rollup, Gaming, etc.