Crypto history
2021: EIP-1559 changes Ethereum fees and introduces base-fee burning
The London upgrade changed fee estimation and the destination of part of each transaction fee.
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The base fee
EIP-1559 introduced a protocol-calculated base fee that adjusts with block demand. Transactions can specify fee caps and a priority fee, while the base-fee component is burned. The change went live with London in August 2021.
This changed both user experience and ETH's supply economics. A wallet could estimate the next block's base fee from the protocol rather than rely exclusively on a first-price bidding guess. Burning also meant that part of transaction expenditure reduced existing supply instead of going to the block producer.
What burning does not establish
The amount burned depends on network usage and the fee mechanism. It is not a fixed dividend and does not guarantee that supply always declines: issuance and burning must be compared over a stated interval. A transaction can also include a priority payment and other execution costs.
The distinction became especially relevant after the Merge changed issuance and validator economics. When a post claims that ETH is inflationary or deflationary, record its time window and data source. A screenshot covering one unusually busy day cannot describe an entire monetary regime.