The Impact of Leading Zeros in Ethereum Addresses on Transaction Costs

Introduction:

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the runtime environment for smart contracts in the Ethereum blockchain. In this article, we will explore an interesting feature of the EVM that can affect transaction costs. Specifically, we will examine how the number of leading zeros in an Ethereum address can impact the gas cost of executing a transaction to that address.

Ethereum Address Encoding:

Ethereum addresses are 20-byte values that are typically represented in hexadecimal format with 40 characters. When an Ethereum address is encoded, any leading zeros are removed, and the remaining characters are used to represent the address. For example, an address like 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 can be represented simply as 0x0, and an address like 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 can be represented as 0x1.

The Impact of Leading Zeros on Transaction Costs:

Gas costs for Ethereum transactions are determined by the complexity of the transaction. The length of the address can also affect the gas cost of a transaction. Since an Ethereum address with more leading zeros is shorter, executing the transaction will use fewer computational resources. This can result in a lower gas cost for transactions sent to addresses with more leading zeros.

Example:

For example, let's consider two Ethereum addresses: 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 and0x1000000000000000000000000000000000000000.

The first address has 39 leading zeros, while the second address has only one leading zero. If we send a transaction of 21,000 gas to each of these addresses, we can observe that the gas cost for the first address is lower:

Transaction to 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000001: 21,000 gas used, 9,881 gas price, total cost of 0.000207301 ETH.

Transaction to 0x1000000000000000000000000000000000000000: 21,000 gas used, 10,387 gas price, total cost of 0.000218547 ETH.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, an Ethereum address's leading zero counts can affect how much gas is used to send a transaction to that address. Because less computing power is needed to execute a transaction at addresses with more leading zeros, gas prices may be lower as a result. Developers and users who want to reduce their transaction costs on the Ethereum network should take this into account.