Ethereum advocates celebrated the growth in daily revenue, while many others pointed to network congestion and difficulty of use.
The Ethereum network’s gas fee soared to a new multi-month high amid a growing memecoin frenzy. The high transaction fee has multiplied the daily income of Ethereum compared to Bitcoin (BTC). Although Ethereum advocates welcomed the increase in revenue, many others were quick to point to the increasing congestion of the network and the difficulty in processing transactions.
There was an unusual change in the top 10 gas-burning altcoins, where instead of ETH (ETH), WETH, and USDT (USDT), memecoins like TROLL, APED, and BOBO were in the top 10 spenders.
â›½ï¸ A highly unusual shift in top 10 gas burning #altcoins you have emerged today. Instead of $ETH, $WETHand $USDT being at the top of the fee distribution list, we’re seeing new assets like $TROLL, $APEDand $BOBO among them. Read our latest deep dive. https://t.co/7SlmJ59k2m pic.twitter.com/Y2kaLKZTrL
—Santiment (@santimentfeed) April 19, 2023
The average gas price for Ethereum transactions as of April 20 was 81.94 gwei, up from 60.82 gwei on April 19 and 44.42 gwei last year, an increase of 34.74% since April 19 and 84.46% as of April 20, 2022. The gwei is a denomination of Ether and represents one billionth of an ETH.
Freelance Ethereum Educator Anthony Sassano shared the increase in daily fee income from the Ethereum network and said that the second largest blockchain had brought in 28 times the income of Bitcoin. He also cited Ethereum layer 2 platforms like Arbitrum One that have outperformed the BTC network in terms of daily revenue due to the ongoing meme frenzy.
The main argument of Ethereum defenders is that the high rate of gas and the consequent increase in income demonstrate the increasing usability of the network. However, many in the crypto community on Twitter were quick to point out that the broad usage they are referring to is only a few thousand users staking on memecoins.
The extensive usage you’re talking about are a few thousand users gambling meme coins. I thought (and hoped) eth was supposed to be the future of finance
— nap.BasicallyRiskFree (@CryptoPannella) April 20, 2023
Apparently some users they paid gas fees of up to several hundred dollars, while others complained of having to pay a higher gas fee than the actual transaction.
try to buy a ~$20 NFT on eth, and the gas is ~$40.
some ppl say the infra operators deserve to be paid. sure, but imaging paying visa $40 fee for buying a $20 digital good.. infra should be affordable. pic.twitter.com/5L4SYjT5af—0xMQQ (@0xMQQ) April 18, 2023
Another major reason for the rise in gas rates was attributed to a Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) trading bot that is trading memecoins on a large scale. The bot in question “jaredfromsubway.eth” has spent the most gas in the last 24 hours, spending 455 ETH ($950,000) and using 7% of the network’s total gas.
In the last two months, he spent more than 3,720 ETH ($7 million) in gas fees and made more than 180,000 transactions.
bro has used 7% of the total gas on ethereum over the past 24hrs (455 ETH) just feasting away on $pepe
dating from the legendary @hildobby_ https://t.co/j3SqtQnkKJ pic.twitter.com/hWavtdO1D5
—beetle (@1kbeetlejuice) April 18, 2023
The Subway-themed bot is using the sandwich trading technique to pocket millions of dollars while congesting the network.
