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

TL;DR

This paper empirically analyzes Ethereum's mempool dynamics, revealing fee-based disparities, inefficiencies in transaction prioritization, and proposing congestion-aware solutions to improve fairness, validator efficiency, and network scalability.

Contribution

It provides the first empirical analysis of Ethereum's mempool behavior, identifying prioritization biases and proposing congestion-aware fee adjustments and slot reservations.

Findings

High-fee transactions are prioritized, low-fee transactions face delays.

High fees do not always guarantee faster confirmation.

Mempool congestion impacts validator efficiency and proposal latency.

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.