The Ethereum network’s commission dropped significantly this week, dropping below $10 per transaction to levels not seen since March 10, 2022. As of May 17, the average transfer fee on the ethereum network is 0.0027 ether, or $5.68 per transaction. Cheaper tier one (L1) commissions led to tier two (L2) commissions ranging from $0.02 to $1.13 per transfer.
Ethereum onchain fees dropped after a brief spike last week
This week is an optimal time to send ether or use the Ethereum network to exchange coins, as transfer fees on the network have dipped below the $10 mark. In fact, the average transfer fee for ether on May 17, 2022 is about 0.0027 ether or $5.68 per transaction.
The L1 fee in Ethereum hasn’t been this low in 68 days, or since March 10. The drop in fees followed a brief spike during the Terra blockchain carnage on May 12: On that day, fees averaged $31.19 per transfer.
As average network fees have declined this week, median fees when using L1 and L2 have also declined significantly. As of this writing on Tuesday morning (ET), the median network commission for Ethereum transactions is 0.0012 ether or $2.59 per transfer.
Median commissions fell to $1.01, according to etherscan metrics on Tuesday. Etherscan data shows that selling Opensea today could cost about $9.72, exchanging on the decentralized exchange (dex) at $8.86, and transferring the ERC20 token at $2.60.
L2 fees in Ethereum followed a reduction in the cost of onchain transfers
As usual, as onchain transfer fees are cheaper, L2 fees have also dropped significantly in the last five days since May 12. For example, the cost per transfer through the Metis Network is about $0.02, and the token exchange is about $0.10.
Although Metis is the cheapest L2, Loopring’s transfer fee is only $0.03 per ether transfer, and exchanging tokens through Loopring will cost about $0.52. On Tuesday, Zksync’s transfer fee is about $0.05 and a single coin exchange will cost $0.13. The most expensive L2 today is Arbitrum One, as the transfer fee is about $0.25 and the coin exchange on Arbitrum is about $0.35.
The drop in ether transfer fees follows the network’s record-breaking hash rate reached on May 13, 2022 on a block of 14,770,231. On that day, the network’s processing power reached 1.27 petahash per second (PH/s) and continues to grow.
The value of Ethereum has lost 41.8% since the beginning of the year, but ETH is still up 482,570% since October 20, 2015, or about six years ago. ETHhas a market valuation of 18.4% of the net dollar value of the entire crypto economy with a market capitalization of about $253 billion.
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