FIP13: Gas Price Increase

FIP13: Gas Price Increase

Abstract

This FIP proposes to increase the gas price limit to 10 gwei. The current gas price per transaction is 1 gwei.

Motivation

  • The amount of transactions on the Fuse Network has been gradually increasing over the last few months. To prepare for increased Fuse demand, the Fuse Network is being methodologically scaled to meet future growth expectations in preparation of the expanding Fuse Ecosystem and Fuse Network, which is expected to continue throughout the year.
  • Optimizing the network will lead to an increase in throughput, which can safely handle high peak loads and reduce potential spam attacks. This recent update will further enhance the overall user experience for all users.
  • As the ecosystem expands, we’re dedicated to delivering the scaling phase of the Fuse roadmap through 2022, enhancing speed and expanding network capacity while maintaining security and a consistent commitment to safeguard Fuse’s vision.

Key Benefits & Rationale

  • The current 1gwei gas fee on Fuse is not a long-term solution because it is vulnerable to chain spam attacks, which can lead to stuck transactions and chain consensus drops or chain unusability.
  • Our internal stress test simulations on Sparknet validates our observations that with the current 1gwei gas fees we are highly exposed to such spam attacks; we need to increase the gas fees to mitigate risks of such spam attacks.
  • This FIP will increase the gas fee to 10 gwei.

Objections to the proposal & Things to Consider

  • In practice, increasing gas fees to 10 gwei may not 100% mitigate spam attacks if the attacker is well funded and if there exists an economic viability to architect such spam attacks.
  • Some validators or developers or users on the Fuse chain, may have hardcoded the gas fees to 1gwei. In such scenarios, they may experience stuck transactions.
  • To ensure that transactions are never stuck the Fuse owned validators will continue to accept transactions below 10gwei. This will result in any transactions below the new minimum to take upwards of NUM_VALIDATORS * 5 seconds.

Implementation & Deployment

  • The Snapshot technique will be used to submit this Proposal to the Fuse Network Validators for a vote if the overall sentiment is good following the discussion on this Forum.
  • The proposal will be included in the next Fuse node software release if it is approved by the validators.

Further References

3 Likes

This FIP is created primarily to mitigate spam attacks.

Spam

One of the most common ways that spam works is by flooding the target system with numerous requests, although the requests themselves are valid and legitimate. Spam on the blockchain is the act of sending a large number of small transactions at the same time. The transactions sent by the adversaries are legitimate, but each one consists of transferring the smallest amount of money allowed in the network. The minimal quantity of Fuse token that can be sent to the Fuse network in a single transaction is the dust limit for the Fuse chain.

With the current gas fees of 1gwei, the dust limit on the chain near zero, and the cost of creating a wallet address near zero, any malicious attacker can launch necessary low cost cloud hosted devices to spam the Fuse network at a very economical price. There is a delicate tradeoff between keeping the tx fees low and protecting the network of any potential spam attacks.

I believe this is a necessary change and improvement for optimizing the Fuse network, and enabling smooth user experience.

I support FIP13.

0xNagu
Tech Lead Fuse Network

3 Likes

I would support FIP13,
I am very interested to hear some more technical opinions from other validator operates, and the fuse community, as this will affect everyone.

So in essence, any and all SPAM attacks would in the future will be handled by the network owned validators, but the privately run validators would ensure that the network would stay strong, and continue functioning, as intended. (assuming the attacker would not want to spend 10x the gas to do said attack)

2 Likes

Thank you @0xNagu

I support the FIP13 and will be voting yes as one of the validators currently on Fuse

3 Likes

FIP13 is active for voting by the validators.

https://vote.fuse.io/#/proposal/0xecbc570116fb9a40ef0f49f46faf97e31342f9c41500406691b085c8a930f953

1 Like