The 1inch Network is prepared for the Ethereum Berlin hard fork to save users gas

The 1inch smart contract has been optimized for Ethereum’s Berlin hard fork, which will be activated on April 15.

The Berlin hard fork is part of a series of non-backward compatible hard forks of Ethereum to implement upgrades to the network. Although due to Berlin some operations were repriced, the 1inch smart contract has been optimized for the hard fork and transactions through 1inch will actually become less expensive.

Prior to Berlin, a read from a smart contract’s storage cost 800 gas and a call between smart contracts cost 700 gas. Following the Berlin hard fork on April 15, a read will cost 2,100 gas and calls between smart contracts will cost 2,600 gas. These new costs apply only to the first reads and calls, while all repeated operations in the same transaction cost only 100 gas. This adjustment to gas costs is implemented under Ethereum Improvement Proposal 2929 (EIP-2929).

EIP-2929 was necessary to minimize the risk of DDoS attacks on the Ethereum blockchain. However, DeFi users will be still hit with higher gas costs while swapping tokens on DEXes (2–3x as much as before Berlin).

Predicting the consequences of the Berlin hard fork, the 1inch Labs team began work in December, 2020, to optimize the 1inch smart contract specifically for gas repricing.

As a result, following the hard fork’s activation, the 1inch smart contract will actually be more cost efficient than prior to Berlin. In particular, 1inch will offer lower gas costs in comparison to just about all other Ethereum-based DeFi protocols, which haven’t yet optimized their smart contracts for Berlin.

The Berlin hard fork will be activated on April 15, 2021 at block 12,244,000!