Even with the increasing blockchain activity on Ethereum, gas fees on the world’s largest smart contract platform remain close to historical lows, indicating a more developed and scalable infrastructure ready for complex real-world applications.
Ethereum transaction fees have stayed at a historical low of just 0.16 gwei, or roughly $0.01 per transaction. Fees were slightly higher for token swaps at $0.15 and $0.27 for non-fungible token (NFT) sales, according to blockchain data aggregator Milkroad.
The low costs sharply contrast with earlier periods of high network activity, when increased demand often drove fees up, which was a major criticism of Ethereum in past cycles.
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Ethereum activity surges amid stable fees
Daily transactions on the network climbed to 1.6 million on Tuesday, hitting a near one-month high, the last seen at the start of October before the record $19 billion liquidation event.
Active addresses also increased to comparable levels, peaking at a monthly high of 695,872 on Saturday, according to the crypto intelligence platform Nansen.
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Ethereum’s historically low gas fees follow the Dencun and Pectra upgrades, both aimed at reducing transaction costs and boosting throughput.
Launched in May, the Pectra upgrade has doubled the blob capacity of layer-2 (L2) networks, reducing transaction fees on L2 by around 50%. This upgrade also helped shift more transactions away from the mainnet to further lower costs.
The previous major upgrade, Dencun, has also succeeded in lowering L2 transaction fees and offloading more transactions from the L1, making average Ethereum transaction fees cheaper by 95% a year after its deployment on March 13, 2024, Cointelegraph reported.
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