Can Ethereum gas fees become fixed?

Ethereum users have been troubled by the fluctuation of gas fees, which raises a question: can gas fees become constant?

In August 2021, a geth developer in the Ethereum Researcher Forum asked, can the gas price be fixed? How would the problems caused by fixing it compare to the current ones? Why doesn't Ethereum do this?

There were four replies in the forum regarding this question, and the most interesting discussion was about gas fees.

Micah Zoltu, who is in charge of the proposal audit, responded:

The amount of block space that will be needed in the future is unknown. Because there is a limited amount of block space available, someone has to decide which transactions are included and which are excluded. If gas prices are not flexible, then someone will find a way to pay for priority through some other opaque, non-public means. Without a price priority mechanism, there will be a constant backlog of transactions, effectively sacrificing timeliness.

Developer DileepKumarD replied:

Why on earth does a $1 transaction cost 10 to 50 times more than gas? While the core ETH technology is superior, the math is pathetic here. Millions of users had to lose 99% of their funds on gas, defrauding innocent newbies.

This also leads to all the developers having to stick with DAPPs and projects just to get back the lost funds from new members who are jumping into ETH like sheep.

Developer WilliamMorriss responded:

Markets solve the economic calculation (pricing and allocation) problem, and when you determine the price, it is either too high or too low. If it is too low, there will be a shortage of block space to ensure that the most important transactions are included. If it is too high, blocks will be wasted (surplus) because consumers have priced them out of use.

In AVAX's attempt, the price was too high and blocks were wasted. One day it will be lower. Currently, if they hadn't put their price floor in place, their blockchain would be even more filled with spam than it already is. This is because they have artificially expanded capacity far beyond what they can use. This has the effect of making the cost of operating a node prohibitively high, and the cost will continue to grow over time.

GavinYue replied:

I think in the long run, the free market is the best solution. But we also need a more stable society, like the Social Security program which is almost broken.

So why not reserve a certain percentage of block space, say 5-15%, to get zero or minimal gas fees? I think it's worth a try.