---
eip: 2780
title: Reduce intrinsic transaction gas
author: Matt Garnett (@lightclient)>
discussions-to: https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-2780-reduce-intrinsic-cost-of-transactions/4413
status: Draft
type: Standards Track
category: Core
created: 2020-07-11
---

## Abstract
Reduce the intrinsic cost of a transaction to `16,360` gas.

## Motivation
The current `21,000` gas intrinsic cost of a transaction does not accurately
represent the true cost of the transaction.

## Specification
After `block.number >= FORK_BLOCK`, enforce an intrinsic gas cost of `16,360`.

## Rationale

The EVM-equivalent of transaction validation would consist mostly of ~110 bytes
of data and 2 x `SLOAD (0x54)`, 2 x `SSTORE (0x55)`, and an `ECRECOVER`. This
translates to `(16 * 110) + 2 * 800 + 2 * 5,000 (assuming account is
initialized) + 3000 = 16,360`. This implies that the current intrinsic cost of
a transaction is overpriced by `4,640` gas. Since validation is implemented
natively, it's possible that this is a conservative estimate.

## Backwards Compatibility
TBD

## Test Cases
TBD

## Implementation
TBD

## Security Considerations

#### Increased transactions-per-block
Reducing the intrinsic gas of transaction will lead to an increase of
transactions per block. This has several consequences:

* Historically, periods of high transaction counts has correlated with
  higher-than-average uncle blocks being mined. It must be determined that the
  new intrinsic cost `16,360` will not adversely affect.

* The state size of Ethereum continues to grow at an unsustainable pace.
  Increased the transaction throughput will exasperate this problem.

#### Storage may be accessed more than once
It is difficult to arrive at a fixed-cost for the intrinsic transaction fee,
because it's possible for clients to need to revalidate a transaction in its
mempool. This can be caused artificially by submitting a chain of transactions
and bumping the gas price of the first transaction by minimal step sizes. Since
the first transaction is now a "new" transaction, the transactions that follow
sequentially will need to ensure the account's balance can still afford to
transact.

## Copyright
Copyright and related rights waived via [CC0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).