For over two years now, EIP-1559 has been in active development. In that time, dozens of people and over five development teams have worked to specify, audit, implement, test and communicate this highly-anticipated upgrade to Ethereum’s fee market.

Throughout this process, the community has been incredibly supportive. We've seen a massive grassroots movement emerge, consistently eager to contribute time, resources, and funds to get this EIP across the finish line and deployed on mainnet. With the London hard fork scheduled for August 3-5, we are now in the final stages of this process.

Shaping Positive Outcomes

Despite recent progress, challenges remain for the maintainers of Ethereum Public Goods. The people who choose to work on them often have a very high opportunity cost and limited methods available to capture the upside from their work.

EIP-1559 is a great example of this. It was an incredibly complex change, the largest done on Ethereum mainnet to date, which will improve both the user experience and economics of the entire network. And yet, the engineers, researchers, and other contributors will not directly capture any of the ultimate benefit to the network.

Presenting the 1559 NFT Series

As an experiment in providing cultural prestige & economic upside to EIP-1559 Contributors, we are issuing a limited series of EIP-1559 NFTs. This series was created by @_kitteh, who has previously created artworks centered on Public Goods recognition. All proceeds from NFT minting are trustlessly forwarded to EIP-1559 contributors using a split contract. These include:

• EIP authors (15%);
• client teams who iterated on early versions of EIP-1559 to get the spec to where it is today (49%); [0]
• researchers who analyzed the economic and technical impacts of the change (16%);
• folks who helped manage the effort and communicate progress to the community (12%);
• many others who helped extensively with testing to ensure the EIP was safe to deploy to mainnet (6%).

The remaining 2% of the allocation was given to @_kitteh for their work creating the actual NFTs

Artist Statement: _kitteh

I set out to visualize the collaborative process of developers and community as they shape Ethereum.

These two groups, represented by the two differently coloured hands, have the same golden life force flowing through them. The hands slowly rotate around "the Node," which represents the collective network. A mesh of silver strings bridge between hand and Node, visualizing the Ethereum change process.

Since EIP-1559 is such a fundamental change to the core workings of Ethereum, I placed the numbers 1-5-5-9 exactly there - directly within the delicate etched metal Node.

For the 1559 Patron NFT, I further emphasized the different dimensions in which the developers and community usually reside. Yet, the most amazing things are built by crossing the frame's threshold to the other realm, allowing you to see the situations at hand from another perspective. The semi-opaque liquid veil represents how difficult it can sometimes be for both sides to see the other's perspective.

In the perpetually online world of blockchains, stewarding infrastructure is a fluid, never-ending process. A dance of creator and user.

So we continue on, infinitely dancing across dimensions as we build a better Ethereum.

If you would like to show support to the 1559 contributors even though the Supporter NFT is sold out, any ETH sent to this split contract will be automatically sent to them. Note: the contract only supports ETH, tokens sent to it will be lost.

For those who want to go above and beyond in signaling their support, we are auctioning a premium one-of-one: the 1559 Patron Edition. This piece will be on auction for 155.9 hours from the moment the reserve price of 15.59 ETH is met.

The 1559 Supporter NFT has sold out. These mints will forever act as a show of support for the people who delivered EIP-1559.

Please note that minting these NFTs or participating in the auction should not be construed as an investment of any kind.

We hope that the 1559 NFT Series, if successful, will demonstrate to present and future contributors to Ethereum Public Goods that alternative funding models, where part of the value created can be captured, are possible.

Finally, we want to thank everyone who has supported this effort over the past few years. It literally took a village, and your enthusiasm about EIP-1559 has been a constant source of motivation for everyone involved.

Now, let’s get this onto mainnet 🔥

If you're interested in other projects like this, check out the Beacon Book: a multimedia project (digital text, mintable NFTs, + physical book) featuring the perspectives of 46 Eth2 contributors that worked on the Beacon Chain launch.

[0] Note: Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation go-ethereum team have both declined to receive proceeds from this project. The two additional teams who worked on the go-ethereum implementation, Vulcanize and Quilt, are included as recipients.