Austin Larson
Software Engineer, Ava Labs
Talk Title
Real World Gas Design
Abstract
Blockchains cannot exist without gas and their pricing mechanisms. Far from being just a transaction fee, gas is the market mechanism that balances security, resource allocation, and user experience. Poorly tuned models can distort validator incentives, introduce denial-of-service risks, and create inefficiencies on chain.
Avalanche’s experimentation in gas design demonstrates the direct effects these mechanisms have on network activity. Beyond pricing, the discussion will address how gas targets influence state growth, long-term scalability, and network stability. A case study comparing EIP-1559 with a novel gas mechanism on Avalanche’s main chain will illustrate the user-facing differences between seemingly similar approaches.
Bio
Austin Larson recently graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Master's in Computer Science from the Whiting School of Engineering. I currently work on Avalanche's custom EVM implementation in Go, integrating Firewood, an in-house Merkleized database in Rust. I love to talk cryptography and statistics with anyone who will listen!