Welcome to the ECIP-1120 research hub. This site documents the development of "Basefee Market with Miner Rewards"—a proposal to bring EIP-1559 to Ethereum Classic while redistributing base fees to miners instead of burning them.
The Problem
Ethereum Classic faces a compatibility challenge. Modern wallets, dApps, and infrastructure increasingly expect EIP-1559 transaction types. Without support for these standards, ETC risks becoming inaccessible to the broader ecosystem.
But ETC can't simply copy Ethereum's approach. Fee burning conflicts with ETC's fundamentals:
- Fixed supply: ETC already has a supply cap via ECIP-1017. Burning fees would drain the security budget as block subsidies decline.
- Miner sustainability: Proof-of-work chains need fee revenue to flow to miners, especially during tail-end emissions.
ETC needs EIP-1559 compatibility—but with fees going to miners, not the burn address.
The Solution
ECIP-1120 implements EIP-1559's fee market mechanics with one critical change: base fees are distributed to miners. For reasons we won't get into here, those fees are distributed to miners over a series of blocks rather than immediately in the same block.
This delivers:
- Ecosystem compatibility with modern wallets and tooling
- Predictable fees through EIP-1559's dynamic pricing
- Miner sustainability by preserving fee revenue
- Protocol neutrality via math-only, consensus-level implementation
No smart contracts. No DAOs. No governance overhead.
For the complete technical details, see the full specification.
What This Site Covers
ECIP-1120 is in active research. Before proposing activation, we're determining optimal parameters through rigorous analysis. This site documents that process:
- Specification: Technical details of the proposal
- Research: Analysis of parameters, benchmarks, and economic modeling
- Nolympia: Comparison with alternative approaches like ECIP-1111
Research Areas
We're currently investigating two key areas:
Block Elasticity: How much can blocks expand beyond the target gas limit? Higher elasticity could enable large contract deployments and L2 settlement while maintaining conservative average block sizes.
Distribution Mechanism: How should fees be distributed across blocks? The mechanism must disincentivize gaming while maximizing security budget.
Browse our research articles for the latest findings.
Why Not Olympia?
ECIP-1111 (Olympia) is an alternative proposal that redirects fees to a smart contract treasury with DAO governance.
ECIP-1120 takes a different approach: protocol-native distribution with zero governance overhead. We believe this better aligns with ETC's "code is law" principles.
Read our detailed comparison for the full analysis.
Get Involved
This is a transparent, community-driven process. We welcome feedback from client developers, miners, economists, and all ETC community members.
All research will be published here for public review before any final specification is proposed.
Ready to dive deeper? Start with the specification or explore our research articles.