Celo Votes To Increase Minimum Gas Threshold

Celo, a mobile-focused smart contracting platform compatible with Ethereum’s virtual machine, is voting on a proposal to increase the network’s minimum gas threshold. 

Voting for Celo Governance Proposal 0066 started today, Wednesday, January 18, and ends on Friday, January 27. As of the time of writing, the turnout stands at 2.6% of the total supply, with 6,840,826 CELO locked as votes. 

Out of this, 6,840,116 CELO supports the proposal, 620 CELO is against the idea, and 90 CELO are voting to abstain. CELO is the native currency of the Celo proof-of-stake smart contracting platform based on the PBFT consensus mechanism.

The proposal seeks to increase the minimum gas threshold to $0.001 for simple ERC-20 transactions. Unlike Ethereum, where gas fees must be paid in ETH only, in Celo, users can pay using ERC-20 currencies, not just CELO. Gas fees are paid to prevent Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks.

Like Ethereum, the gas fee structure in Celo adopts the proposals under EIP-1559. As EIP-1559 stipulates, there must be a gas price minimum that applies to all Celo transactions. This minimum fee applies regardless of the validator processing the transaction. It also fluctuates depending on demand. Celo has clarified that should the proposal pass, only the base fee will be impacted.

Under the Celo Governance Proposal 0066, the validator rewards from the gas fee will not be affected. Celo added that though the base fee might increase slightly, network activity would remain the same because “gas prices are very low, transactions are virtually free.”

The proposer laid out the rationale of this proposal, saying that the cost of a transaction for the broader Celo ecosystem carries extra dimensions than the gas spent. Like in other chains, all transactions posted on the network must be processed and immutably stored in the blockchain. 

The current gas structure, the proposer said, doesn’t impact processing or the general state of the network. However, it could have severe ramifications in the long term. Changing gas fees would have added benefits for the ecosystem, leading to a higher minimum benefit. Consequently, they argue that this will warrant the long-term cost of the overall ecosystem. 

Besides increasing the minimum benefits, the proposal will shield the network against spam attacks. By increasing the minimum gas fees threshold, any spamming activity would be more expensive. 

The proposal reads:

“Stability and security of the network 1 Low gas prices allow actors to spam the network at virtually no cost. Currently, it would take time, until the minimum gas threshold increases substantially, to stop the attack. Increasing the minimum gas threshold ensures that such an attack is much more costly from the get-go, even if it is only sustained for a short period.”

CELO is trading at $0.682 when writing on January 25, 2023.

Feature image from Canva, Chart from TradingView