The Ethereum blockchain continues to evolve, and with each upgrade, user experience and network efficiency improve. One of the most anticipated upgrades in early 2021 was the Berlin hard fork, activated on April 15 at block 12,244,000. As part of this significant network evolution, the 1inch Network took proactive steps to ensure users wouldn’t face rising transaction costs—instead, they’d benefit from them.
With smart contract optimizations completed well in advance, 1inch has positioned itself as a leader in gas efficiency during one of Ethereum’s most impactful protocol changes in recent memory.
Understanding the Berlin Hard Fork and Gas Repricing
The Berlin hard fork introduced several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), with EIP-2929 being among the most influential. This proposal adjusted the gas costs of certain operations to enhance network security, particularly by mitigating potential DDoS attack vectors that exploit low-cost storage and contract calls.
Before Berlin:
- Reading from a smart contract’s storage: 800 gas
- Calling another smart contract: 700 gas
After Berlin:
- First-time read from storage: 2,100 gas
- First-time inter-contract call: 2,600 gas
- Subsequent repeated operations in the same transaction: 100 gas
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This change means that while initial operations became more expensive, repeated actions within a single transaction became significantly cheaper. The design encourages batched and optimized transactions—exactly the kind of behavior that protocols like 1inch are built around.
Why Higher Gas Costs Were Necessary
At first glance, increasing base gas prices may seem counterproductive, especially during a time when high gas fees were already a major pain point for DeFi users. However, EIP-2929 wasn’t about revenue generation—it was about network resilience.
By repricing state-access operations, Ethereum made it economically unfeasible for attackers to spam the network with low-cost but resource-intensive transactions. This strengthens the long-term viability of the blockchain without altering its core functionality.
That said, many decentralized exchanges (DEXs) saw an increase in effective gas usage post-Berlin—some by 2 to 3 times compared to pre-fork levels—because their smart contracts weren’t optimized to take advantage of the new pricing model.
How 1inch Turned a Challenge into an Advantage
Anticipating these changes, the 1inch Labs team began optimizing their smart contracts in December 2020, months before the fork went live. Their goal? To ensure that users wouldn’t just avoid higher fees—but actually pay less than before.
Through strategic refactoring and leveraging the new "cheap re-entry" mechanics (where repeated calls cost only 100 gas), 1inch redesigned key components of its aggregator and limit order protocols. This allowed multiple operations—such as balance checks, approvals, and routing logic—to be bundled efficiently within a single transaction context.
As a result:
- The overall gas overhead per trade was reduced.
- Repeated internal calls were minimized and streamlined.
- Users experienced lower total transaction costs despite the higher base prices.
In fact, after the Berlin activation, 1inch became one of the most gas-efficient DeFi platforms on Ethereum, outperforming most competitors who hadn’t adapted their codebases.
Real-World Impact for DeFi Users
For everyday traders and liquidity providers, this optimization translates directly into savings. On-chain trading involves numerous smart contract interactions—approvals, balance reads, path calculations, and final transfers. Without optimization, each of these could trigger expensive first-time access costs.
But with 1inch’s updated architecture:
- Common data points are accessed once and reused.
- Contract-to-contract calls are batched intelligently.
- Redundant checks are eliminated through state-aware logic.
This means users get faster execution and lower effective gas prices per trade, even during periods of network congestion.
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Core Keywords Driving Visibility
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- Ethereum Berlin hard fork
- 1inch Network
- gas optimization
- EIP-2929
- DeFi gas costs
- smart contract efficiency
- lower transaction fees
- DEX gas savings
These terms reflect what users are actively searching for when navigating Ethereum upgrades and cost-saving strategies in decentralized finance.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: What is the Ethereum Berlin hard fork?
A: The Berlin hard fork is a network upgrade that introduced several protocol improvements to Ethereum, including changes to gas pricing for certain operations under EIP-2929, aimed at improving security and long-term scalability.
Q: Did gas fees go up for all DeFi platforms after Berlin?
A: Many DeFi protocols experienced higher effective gas usage because their contracts weren't optimized for the new pricing model. However, platforms like 1inch adapted beforehand and actually reduced their users' transaction costs.
Q: How did 1inch reduce gas costs despite higher base prices?
A: By restructuring its smart contracts to minimize expensive first-time operations and maximize reuse of cached data and low-cost repeated calls within a single transaction.
Q: What is EIP-2929 and why does it matter?
A: EIP-2929 increases the gas cost of accessing storage and calling external contracts for the first time in a transaction. It helps prevent denial-of-service attacks and promotes more efficient use of network resources.
Q: Can I still save gas using other DEXs?
A: Some DEXs have since implemented optimizations, but at the time of the Berlin fork, 1inch was among the first and most effective in delivering true gas savings to end users.
Q: When was the Berlin hard fork activated?
A: The Berlin hard fork went live on April 15, 2021, at block 12,244,000 on the Ethereum mainnet.
Looking Ahead: Continuous Innovation in DeFi
The Berlin upgrade was not just a technical milestone—it was a test of adaptability for DeFi protocols. 1inch’s successful optimization demonstrates how forward-thinking development can turn potential cost increases into opportunities for improvement.
As Ethereum moves toward further upgrades like London and eventually full scalability via rollups and sharding, protocols that prioritize efficiency, user experience, and proactive engineering will continue to lead the market.
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For users, this means more control, lower barriers to entry, and greater confidence that their transactions are handled efficiently—even during major network transitions.
By staying ahead of the curve, 1inch reinforces its position not just as a swap aggregator, but as a gas-efficient gateway to the broader DeFi ecosystem.