Vitalik Buterin has developed a new EIP-7706 Draft that proposes the addition of a new gas type for transaction calldata. The aim is to introduce a new transaction type that includes max_basefee and priority_fee as a vector, providing values for execution gas, blob gas, and calldata gas. To achieve this, the basefee adjustment mechanism will be modified to use the same approach for all three types of gas.
There are concerns about increasing the Ethereum gas limit, reducing the cost of calldata, or increasing the EIP-4844 blob count before platforms like PeerDAS are available. This is mainly due to the theoretical maximum size of an Ethereum block already being deemed too large, and further increases being financially unfeasible. However, there is a notable inefficiency in the current system. The average block size (excluding blobs) is approximately 100 kB, while the theoretical maximum size is calculated at 1,875,000 bytes (based on 30,000,000 divided by 16). Although blocks can be made larger using zero bytes, practical compression techniques would result in blocks smaller than 1.87 million bytes. Ideally, there should be a way to set a maximum limit without significantly reducing the availability of calldata.
The EIP proposed helps address this concern by implementing the same methodology utilized for blob data in EIP-4844. It suggests the establishment of a distinct fee market for calldata, complete with a separate basefee and per-block gas limit. This would significantly reduce the theoretical maximum calldata size of a block, while economic analysis indicates that calldata pricing on average would become more affordable.
In addition, the EIP introduces a new transaction type that encompasses the three categories of max-basefees and priority fees as a vector, enabling shared code paths to handle all three gas types. Furthermore, the adjustment of the basefee, currently regulated separately for execution gas (introduced in EIP-1559) and blobs (introduced in EIP-4844), will adopt a uniform approach for all three types of gas. This streamlines the basefee adjustment rules and ensures that the more robust mathematical properties of the newer EIP-4844 basefee adjustment algorithm apply to all three gas types.