Lowest fees – Ethereum often had to deal with outrageous transaction fees. However, the crypto winter seems give some respite to the blockchain queen of smart contracts.
Ethereum: fees at their lowest in 6 months
Over the past few years, the Ethereum network has often been plagued by outrageous transaction fees. Thus, between August 2021 and March 2022, it had become common to spend several tens of dollars for a single transaction.
Nevertheless, in the face of the crypto winter, transaction fees have returned to acceptable levels for several months. Indeed, since mid-June, average fees have only rarely exceeded the $5 mark.
According to data from Etherscan, you currently have to spend less than a dollar to transfer to Ethereum. In parallel, the interactions with smart contracts cost between $2 and $5 depending on their complexity.
>> Safety is the basis! To keep your cryptos close to you, trust Ledger (commercial link) <<
The Merge, layer 2 or pure chance?
The timing could lead one to believe that this fee reduction is linked to the deployment of The Mergethe update that brought Ethereum to Proof of Stake.
However, this is not the case. The move to Proof of Stake should have no impact on transaction fees.
In practice, it is more likely that this drop was caused by a overall decline in interest in cryptocurrencies during this bearmarket period.
This decrease can be explained in particular by the doubling of the gas limit per block last August. Thus, it went from 15 to 30 million. As a result, more transactions can be included in a single block, which has the effect of reducing network congestion.
In parallel, the second layer solutions have minimal impact for the moment. The latter could not justify this drop in transaction costs. Indeed, the main Layer 2 are at the origin of among 1 and 3% of the gas used on Ethereumnot demonstrating significant user migration.
Nevertheless, the curve seems to indicate an upward trend in the share represented by the L2s. As a result, these solutions could well have a significant impact in the months or years to come.
For their part, the developers continue to work on the evolutions of the network. Thus, these latter granted to deploy the Shanghai update next March. This will notably introduce the possibility of withdrawing ETH deposited in staking.
In crypto, do not economize on caution! So, to keep your crypto assets safe, the best solution is still a personal hardware wallet. At Ledger, there is something for all profiles and all cryptos. Do not wait to put your capital in safety (commercial link)!