Tether.

Ethereum validators lock 32 ETH in the consensus deposit contract to participate in proposing and attesting to transaction blocks. Misbehaving or offline validators face slashing and inactivity penalties, while honest validators earn block fees and staking rewards without requiring energy-intensive Proof-of-Work hardware.

EIP-1559 replaced traditional first-price gas auctions with a dynamic algorithmic base fee. Instead of paying fees entirely to miners or validators, the network permanently burns the base fee in ETH. When network transaction activity is high, burned fees exceed new validator staking issuance, reducing the net circulating ETH supply.

Rollups execute transactions off-chain in high-speed auxiliary environments and bundle hundreds of transactions into cryptographic proofs settled on Ethereum Layer 1. Optimistic rollups rely on fraud-proof challenge windows (e.g., Arbitrum, Optimism), while ZK-rollups utilize cryptographic validity proofs (e.g., zkSync, Starknet) for near-instant finality.

EIP-4844 introduced temporary cryptographic data containers called 'blobs' that exist for approximately 18 days rather than persisting permanently in Ethereum node memory. This provides Layer-2 rollups with dramatically cheaper data availability, cutting user gas fees on networks like Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism by over 90%.