26 days ago, Ethereum transitioned from a proof-of-work (PoW) network to a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, and since the change, fees on the network have stayed low. This week, however, the cost of gas for Ethereum rose, with data from October 10 showing average fees hitting a high of $4.75 per transaction.
Ethereum’s average gas price jumped more than 80% in three days
Ethereum gas prices are on the rise, soaring 84% from $2.58 per transaction on October 8 to $4.75 per transfer on October 10. This is the first time since August 11, 2022, or roughly 61 days ago, that Ethereum fees have topped $4.
According to statistics from bitinfocharts.com, the median transfer fee on October 10 is $2.2 per transfer; Etherscan.io’s gas tracker also shows a high priority fee of about $27 gwei or $0.62 per transfer today, which shows an increase of.
44 days earlier or August 28, 2022, etherscan.io’s gas tracker showed that fees were lower before the merge, as high priority fees were around $11 gway or $0.34 per transfer. Fees are about $0.62 per high priority transfer, but swapping or moving ERC20 tokens could cost more.
Opensea sales are $2.13 today, compared to $1.17 per transaction on August 28; Uniswap transactions have an estimated cost of about $5.49, compared to about $3.03 44 days ago.
37} Sending an ERC20 token such as USDTor USDC costs $1.61 today, compared to about $0.89 per transaction on August 18. Layer 2 (L2) fees are still much cheaper than Ethereum’s on-chain transfer statistics.
Metis Network is about $0.01 to transfer; ETHand Loopring costs $0.02. Zksync and Arbitrum both cost around $0.03 to transferETH, while Optimism is a little higher today at $0.10 per transfer.
Boba network is about $0.15 per transaction and Aztec network is about $0.25 per transfer.The cost of exchanging ERC20 using the L2 protocol can range between $0.05 and $0.32 depending on which L2 you choose Available.
Since The Merge on September 15,while ETHfees have increased,block times arefaster than before the transition, but only by milliseconds. Pre-merge block times show 0.244 minutes, while post-merge block intervals are 0.201 minutes, 17% faster than before September 15.
Many assumed that gas prices would be lower after The Merge, but the Ethereum Foundation was quite emphatic before the migration that The Merge upgrade would not affect gas prices or throughput.
“The Merge deprecates the use of proof-of-work and is moving to proof-of-stake for consensus, but does not significantly change parameters that directly impact network capacity or throughput,” the Ethereum Foundation announced on August 16, the announcement stated.
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