SVM Testnet Update: Proposal 3 Passed, Feemarket Active, and First Burned Fees Recorded

Hi everyone,

Following the expedited voting period, I am pleased to announce that Proposal 3 has officially passed and been executed on-chain.

The parameter changes are now live, marking a critical milestone for the economic sustainability of the Steem Virtual Machine (SVM) testnet. The era of "0 gas" is officially over, and the network's deflationary fee-burn mechanism is now functioning exactly as designed.

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The Milestone: Active Fee Burning

As detailed in the proposal, the EIP-1559 base fee had previously decayed to zero due to a missing floor parameter. With Proposal 3, we set the min_gas_price and base_fee floor to 1 gwei (1,000,000,000 asteem per gas).

This ensures that every EVM transaction now incurs a base fee, a portion of which is permanently burned. Because 1 gwei perfectly matches the default gas price used by our validator nodes and oracle clients, price-feed transactions continue to operate seamlessly, but now with proper economic accounting.

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Transaction Proof: First Burned Fees

To demonstrate the immediate effect of this upgrade, we can look at a recent, standard EVM transfer on the network.

Transaction Link:
🔗 View on SVM Blockscout

Transaction Breakdown:

Metric	Value
Value Transferred	100 STEEM
Total Transaction Fee	0.000023625 STEEM
Gas Price	1.125 Gwei (0.000000001125 STEEM)
Gas Usage / Limit	21,000 / 21,000 (100%)
Burnt Fees	0.000021 STEEM

As shown above, for a very basic 21,000 gas transfer, 0.000021 STEEM was successfully burnt and removed from circulation. This proves that the 25% fee burn mechanism (along with the rest of the fee distribution model) is now actively processing and enforcing deflationary pressure on the testnet economy.

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Why This Matters

1. Economic Sustainability: A blockchain cannot rely on infinite inflation or zero-fee transactions long-term. Activating the fee burn ensures the network has a sustainable, deflationary economic model.
2. Spam Prevention: A non-zero gas floor protects the network from spam transactions that could otherwise congest the EVM execution layer at no cost to the sender.
3. Validator & Oracle Alignment: By setting the floor to 1 gwei, we aligned the chain's minimum requirements with the default configurations already running on all active validator and oracle nodes, ensuring zero downtime or configuration friction during the transition.

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Network Health and Current Metrics

The SVM testnet continues to operate with exceptional stability alongside these economic improvements.

Current Testnet Statistics:

• Total Blocks Produced: 492,000+ (Approaching 500K)
• Total Transactions: 30,600+
• Average Block Time: ~5.3 seconds
• Active Validators: 8

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Looking Ahead

With the core infrastructure stable, the security hardening complete, and the economic model now functioning correctly, we are in an excellent position. Our focus remains on finalizing the SVM App frontend for public release, which will allow the broader community to easily interact with the Sherpa Protocol liquidity pools and swaps.

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Testnet Disclaimer

Important Reminder: The Steem Virtual Machine (SVM) is strictly in its testnet phase. All bonded STEEM, transactions executed, and tokens generated are purely for testing the consensus and EVM execution layers. There is no real-world monetary value attached to this chain or its assets.

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Thank you to all validators and community members who participated in the governance process. Your engagement ensures that SVM remains a robust, secure, and economically sound environment for innovation.

If you value proactive engineering, rigorous security standards, and transparent development for the STEEM ecosystem, please consider supporting my witness: blaze.apps

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