Ethereum topped all blockchains in fee revenue for 2024, generating $2.48 billion over the year. This strong performance in fees, however, contrasted with ETH’s price, which underperformed expectations during the same period.
All in all, Layer 1 and 2 blockchains collectively earned almost $6.9 billion from transaction fees last year.
Ethereum Maintains Fee Dominance Despite Dencun Upgrade
According to CoinGecko’s latest report, Ethereum’s fee revenue figure witnessed a 3% increase compared to the $2.41 billion earned in 2023.
Despite the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, which lowered Layer 2 transaction costs and a continued shift of users from the main Layer 1 chain to Layer 2 scaling solutions, Ethereum maintained its dominance in fee earnings.
CoinGecko found that the fees Ethereum earned fluctuated month by month. In 2023, it generated between $91.22 million and $448.70 million per month, with higher earnings during May’s meme coin frenzy and the market surge at the end of the year. In 2024, this range expanded significantly, with monthly earnings falling between $62.82 million and $606.77 million.
Ethereum’s fee revenue reached $1.17 billion in the first quarter of 2024 and constituted nearly half of its annual total. This was the blockchain’s best-performing quarter in two years, owing to a surge in on-chain activity triggered by airdrop initiatives.
Bitcoin and BNB Chain Lag Behind
Tron became the second highest-earning blockchain and earned $2.15 billion in fees in 2024, a 116.7% rise from $922.08 million the previous year. The growth in Tron’s fees was largely driven by expanding stablecoin usage, with monthly earnings increasing from $38.36 million in January 2023 to $342.54 million in December 2024.
Next up was Solana, whose annual fee earnings skyrocketed by 2,838%, jumping from $25.55 million in 2023 to $750.65 million in 2024. It was the most popular blockchain ecosystem of the year, with transaction volumes spiking to the point of network congestion in April 2024. Solana’s monthly fee earnings were steady in 2023 but rose unpredictably in 2024, starting at $15.54 million in January, reaching an all-time high of $197.5 million in November, and settling at $120.95 million in December.
On the other hand, Bitcoin’s fee earnings grew by almost 16%, while BNB Chain saw an 8.7% rise, both showing more moderate increases. Bitcoin’s growth has been supported by greater activity from Ordinal NFTs, BRC-20, and Rune tokens, in addition to surging interest in developing on the Bitcoin blockchain.
