Ethereum insiders to get fee cuts that others won’t in upgrade

livemint.com:

When the Ethereum blockchain undergoes its next major upgrade, some key participants will likely see fees decline while they’ll remain the same for other users of the most commercially important cryptocurrency network.

The so-called Shanghai software update projected for next year is expected to give users who pledge, or stake, the network’s native Ether cryptocurrency the ability to free up their coins at some point from special digital wallets used to order transactions on the network. But a number of other small changes are being tucked in with this main one. One of them, called WARM Coinbase -- which has nothing to do with crypto exchange Coinbase Global -- will dramatically reduce some fees paid by major ecosystem participants called builders, who already hold a lot of sway over Ethereum.

Builders such as Flashbots and BloXroute package transactions that are sent on Ethereum into blocks, which are then relayed to validators that order them into the blockchain. Currently, Flashbots relays more than 81% of such block, according to data tracker mevboost.org. Flashbots is also the biggest builder, raising concern among some observers that it could use its power to seek out an advantage or to claim more fees.

Since September, when the new system using builders went into effect under an upgrade known as the Merge, 88% of validators have opted into working with the builders, to get extra fees from traders trying to perform a variety of lucrative strategies, according to data tracker mevboost.org. The builders get paid to package transactions in a certain order, which might allow a trader to, for example, buy a coin ahead of someone else and to resell it to them for a higher price.

One of the justifications for the WARM