I keep hearing that one of the big advantages of moving to proof of stake is that transactions fees will be reduced. I also hear that Ethereum's issuance rate will decrease after the move to proof of stake.
Are these two concepts related?
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Sign up to join this communityNo. These concepts are not directly related.
The transaction fee structure will not be changed with "the merge". The gas fee structure was changed with EIP-1559 which was included in the London hard fork that took place several months ago. Transaction fees may be reduced in upcoming upgrades that introduce sharding. More can be read on that topic here: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/sharding/
Ethereum's issuance rate will indeed decrease. Currently miner's receive a reward of 2 ETH per block mined which happens ~15 seconds. The block reward will be reduced by ~90% (can't find an exact source on this) and will happen every 12 seconds.