Ethereum Ditches Universal Gas Fee, Introduces State Gas for New Addresses

Ethereum's upcoming Glamsterdam hard fork will shake up the way users interact with the network, particularly when it comes to gas fees.

The change will eliminate the long-standing rule that every basic ETH transfer costs exactly 21,000 units of gas. However, transfers to existing addresses will still incur this cost, while sending to new addresses will require an additional 183,600 units of a newly defined category called 'state gas.'

This split pricing system aims to more accurately reflect the actual resource consumption on the network. Creating a new account writes data to Ethereum's state trie, which is a persistent data structure that every full node must maintain.

The Ethereum Foundation has warned wallet providers, block explorers, and fee calculators to update their software before the Glamsterdam hard fork reaches mainnet in the fourth quarter. This will ensure that valid payments are not rejected or underquoted fees, which could lead to transaction failures.