Since Sept. 15, 2024, onchain fees on the Ethereum network have seen a steady rise, jumping from $1 per transaction to $5.08 by Sept. 20. Though there was a slight dip, bringing fees down to just over $4 on Sept. 23, the average cost per transfer reached 0.0027 ETH ($7.06) on Tuesday morning.
Ethereum Users Hit With Increasing Fees
In the past seven days, ethereum (ETH) outpaced bitcoin, posting a 15.9% gain compared to BTC’s 9% increase. Alongside this price hike, Ethereum’s onchain fees have climbed, reaching an average of $7.06 per transaction. According to Etherscan’s gas tracker, a typical high-priority fee on the Ethereum network now sits around $1.07 or 14.411 gwei. Recently, due to previously lower fees, Etherscan even introduced decimal points to its gwei gas estimates.
Etherscan also highlights that certain transactions come at a steeper cost: swaps are priced at $37.69, non-fungible token (NFT) sales at $63.70, bridging at $12.12, and borrowing can set you back $31.98. On the other hand, BTC fees have remained stable, averaging 5 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB), or about $0.848 per transaction. At the same time, mempool.space shows that a high-priority BTC fee is as low as $0.18 or 2 sat/vB. Amid Ethereum’s rising fees, the network remains inflationary at 0.367% annually.
Since the London hard fork and the major fee burn it introduced, ether’s supply has grown by 0.858% annually. A total of 3,153,785 ETH has been issued since the fork on Aug. 5, 2021, bringing the current supply to over 120 million. If proof-of-work (PoW) had stayed in place, the supply would have expanded by 3.23%, or an additional 11.2 million ETH. Thanks to the London hard fork, 4.3 million ETH has been burned, resulting in a net issuance of just 7.53 million ETH.
What do you think about Ethereum’s rising onchain fees? Share your thoughts and opinions about this subject in the comments section below.
