Transaction types

Over time, the Ethereum network has undergone various upgrades and improvements to enhance transaction efficiency, security, and user experience. Three significant transaction types that have evolved are:

  • Legacy Transactions,
  • EIP-2930 Transactions,
  • EIP-1559 Transactions.

Each of these transaction types brings unique features and improvements to the Ethereum network.

Legacy Transactions

Legacy Transactions (type 0x0), the traditional Ethereum transactions in use since the network's inception, include the following parameters:

  • nonce,
  • gasPrice,
  • gasLimit,
  • to,
  • value,
  • data,
  • v,
  • r,
  • s.

These transactions do not utilize access lists, which specify the addresses and storage keys to be accessed, nor do they incorporate EIP-1559 fee market changes.

EIP-2930 Transactions

Introduced in EIP-2930, transactions with type 0x1 incorporate an accessList parameter alongside legacy parameters. This accessList specifies an array of addresses and storage keys that the transaction plans to access, enabling gas savings on cross-contract calls by pre-declaring the accessed contract and storage slots. They do not include EIP-1559 fee market changes.

EIP-1559 Transactions

EIP-1559 transactions (type 0x2) were introduced in Ethereum's London fork to address network congestion and transaction fee overpricing caused by the historical fee market. Unlike traditional transactions, EIP-1559 transactions don't specify a gas price (gasPrice). Instead, they use an in-protocol, dynamically changing base fee per gas, adjusted at each block to manage network congestion.

Alongside the accessList parameter and legacy parameters (except gasPrice), EIP-1559 transactions include:

  • maxPriorityFeePerGas, specifying the maximum fee above the base fee the sender is willing to pay,
  • maxFeePerGas, setting the maximum total fee the sender is willing to pay.

The base fee is burned, while the priority fee is paid to the miner who includes the transaction, incentivizing miners to include transactions with higher priority fees per gas.