Add EIP: Increase MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS

EIPS/eip-draft_increase_blob_base_fee.md

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+---
+eip: <to be assigned>
+title: Increase Blob Base Fee
+description: Adjust the MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS to speed up price discovery on blob space
+author: <Max Resnick (@MaxResnick)>
+discussions-to: <URL>
+status: Draft
+type: Standards Track
+category: Core
+created: 2024-08-31
+requires: 4844
+---
+
+## Abstract
+
+This EIP proposes an increase to the MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS to speed up price discovery on blob space. 
+
+## Motivation
+
+The current MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS is set to 1 wei. This is many orders of magnitude lower than the prevailing price of blobs when blobs enter price discovery. Whenever demand for blobs exceeds supply, blobs enter price discovery, but traversing the 8 orders of magnitude between 1 wei and the point where elasticity of demand starts to decrease takes a long time.
+
+When scoping 4844, the thinking was that blobs would only enter price discovery once relatively quickly after the blob rollout; however, this has not been the case. In fact, blobs have entered price discovery several times, and the frequency of price discovery events is likely to increase in the short term as we approach saturation of capacity. Moreover, the roadmap calls for further increases in blob capacity in subsequent hardforks, which may lead to price discovery events happening around those changes in the future. 
+
+## Specification
+
+The `MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS` constant will be increased as follows:
+
+
+```diff
++ MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS  =  2**25
+- MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS = 1
+```
+
+## Rationale
+
+Each factor of 2 increase in the base fee takes at least $\log_{1.125}(10) = 5.885$ blocks to traverse at full capacity. When blobs enter price discovery, they must climb many factors of 2 to reach the prevailing price. The way I arrived at this number is by looking at the cost of a simple transfer when the base fee is 1 GWEI (~5 cents USD at today's prices) and trying to peg the minimum price of a blob to that. Today, to reach this price, it requires an excess blob gas of `63070646`. When you calculate how long this would take to reach from 0 excess blob gas, you get:
+
+```
+63070646/(3 * 2**17) = 160.396947225
+```
+
+The closest power of 2 to the corresponding reserve price would be `MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS = 2**27`. Out of an abundance of caution, we will go with `MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS = 2**25` to ensure that even if the price of ETH rises significantly, the reserve price will not be set too high. This value corresponds to a minimum blob price of ~1 cent at today's prices. Further, decreasing the `MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS` beyond `2**25` would slow down price discovery without a significant decrease in the price of blobs when the network is unsaturated. 
+
+Below you will find a plot provided by @dataalways showing the fraction of type 3 transaction fees that are paid in blob base fees for different values of `MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS`. Note that even after the proposed change, for historical values of l1 gas, the price of blobs would have been dominated by the price of the L1 gas.  
+
+![Base Fee 1](base_fee_1.png)
+
+<div style="page-break-after: always;"></div>
+
+![Base Fee 2^25](base_fee_225.png)
+
+<div style="page-break-after: always;"></div>
+
+---
+
+
+## Backwards Compatibility
+
+This EIP is not backwards compatible and requires a coordinated upgrade across all clients at a specific block number.
+
+## Security Considerations
+
+- Rollups that use blobs as a data availability layer will need to update their postig strategies. 
+
+## Copyright
+
+Copyright and related rights waived via [CC0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).