Shibarium, the layer-2 blockchain of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, has seen a staggering increase in transaction fees over the past 24 hours as, according to data from Shibariumscan, the total number of BONE spent on gas fees has jumped from 15.67 to 317 tokens, a staggering 2,024% increase.
For those who do not know, BONE is the native token of the ecosystem around the popular meme-inspired cryptocurrency and serves as the fuel for transactions on the Shibarium network.
In addition to covering transaction fees, BONE also plays a critical role in burning the original Shiba Inu token, SHIB. Thus, every time a transaction is processed on the network using BONE as a fee, a portion of it is converted to SHIB and sent to a burning wallet, contributing to the deflationary nature of the SHIB token.
Given the big jump in total fees, it is worth noting that the average amount of BONE spent per transaction has seen an equally notable 1,188% increase, as fees have climbed from 0.00345 BONE to 0.041 BONE.
Shibarium rising
Meanwhile, it looks like this fee spike is related to a larger increase in transactions across the network. The total number of transactions increased by 70% in just 24 hours, from 4,537 to 7,715. The number of active accounts using the Shibarium network grew by 157.14%, with the number of accounts increasing from 42 to 108 in the same period.
With more and more people interested in Shibarium, it is no surprise that network usage is increasing. However, the sudden increase in transaction costs has raised questions in the Shiba Inu community about the long-term sustainability of the network.
