EIP-1559: Separating mechanisms from memes

EIP-1559 was the first significant change to Ethereum's transaction fee mechanism, designed to improve economic efficiency and user experience rather than to lower fees directly. Its association with the Ultrasound Money meme has led many people to misunderstand what it was built to address. The upgrade also paved the way for multi-dimensional fee markets, starting with EIP-4844. Under the legacy first-price auction, users had to guess suitable bids from public mempool data, while the fee burn was a design choice meant to prevent manipulation rather than to increase ETH's value.