Unraveling Ethereum's Mempool: The Impact of Fee Fairness, Transaction Prioritization, and Consensus Efficiency

2025-06-09

AI Summary

This paper addresses fee market inefficiency, low-fee transaction exclusion, and confirmation delays caused by mempool congestion in Ethereum’s PoS network. Leveraging real-time on-chain data from Geth and Prysm nodes, we conduct an empirical analysis revealing that EIP-1559 fails to eliminate fee-based priority bias—excessively high fees do not guarantee faster confirmation—and that validator proposal failures and block delays are significantly influenced by mempool dynamics. To mitigate these issues, we propose three novel mechanisms: (1) a congestion-aware dynamic fee adjustment model; (2) dedicated block slot reservation for low-fee transactions; and (3) an execution optimization scheme resilient to out-of-gas vulnerabilities. Experimental evaluation demonstrates a 37% increase in low-fee transaction inclusion rate, a 22% reduction in average confirmation latency, and a 15% decrease in validator proposal failure rate—substantially improving fee fairness and network scalability.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design
• Search and Optimization: Evaluation and Analysis
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines

Abstract

Ethereum's transaction pool (mempool) dynamics and fee market efficiency critically affect transaction inclusion, validator workload, and overall network performance. This research empirically analyzes gas price variations, mempool clearance rates, and block finalization times in Ethereum's proof-of-stake ecosystem using real-time data from Geth and Prysm nodes. We observe that high-fee transactions are consistently prioritized, while low-fee transactions face delays or exclusion despite EIP-1559's intended improvements. Mempool congestion remains a key factor in validator efficiency and proposal latency. We provide empirical evidence of persistent fee-based disparities and show that extremely high fees do not always guarantee faster confirmation, revealing inefficiencies in the current fee market. To address these issues, we propose congestion-aware fee adjustments, reserved block slots for low-fee transactions, and improved handling of out-of-gas vulnerabilities. By mitigating prioritization bias and execution inefficiencies, our findings support more equitable transaction inclusion, enhance validator performance, and promote scalability. This work contributes to Ethereum's long-term decentralization by reducing dependence on high transaction fees for network participation.

Problem

• Analyzing Ethereum's mempool dynamics and fee market inefficiencies
• Investigating transaction prioritization biases and delays in Ethereum
• Proposing solutions for fairer transaction inclusion and validator efficiency

Innovation

• Congestion-aware fee adjustments for Ethereum
• Reserved block slots for low-fee transactions
• Improved handling of out-of-gas vulnerabilities