Ethereum continues to deal with a persistent hurdle, the high fees charged for every transaction on its network.. Although the start of the year was expected to bring some decrease in these costs, the data reveals that transaction fees on Ethereum have continued to increase rather than decrease.
Since the beginning of 2023, the average transaction fees on the Ethereum network have experienced a significant increase, going from 23 gwei to an average of 85 gwei. This means that Ethereum users must pay higher fees to complete their transactions on the network.
But before going further, it is necessary to explain a little about what it is “gwei”. It is known as the commission that must be paid to the network for the confirmation of the transaction. One of the documents found on the Ethereum.org page explains that: “Since each Ethereum transaction requires computational resources to execute, each transaction requires a fee. Gas refers to the commission required to carry out a successful Ethereum transaction.”.
Diagram adapted from Ethereum EVM illustrated – Source: Ethereum.org
However, last May 10 marked a critical point in this upward trend, since the rates reached their maximum level, reaching 202 gwei. This extremely high spike raises serious concerns for Ethereum users, due to the fact that further hinders the use of the network and limits access to decentralized services and applications.
Historic Gas Rates – Dune Analytics
Despite efforts by the Ethereum community and developers to resolve this issue, high transaction fees remain an unresolved challenge. This situation raises questions about the scalability of Ethereum and the ability of the network to handle increased demand without drastically increasing fees..
In fact, the same founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Butterin, expressed his concern about it when he made a post on his website stating that: “high transaction fees are a very important issue because the scale has not yet been fully resolved”.
In order to maintain the viability and widespread adoption of Ethereum, it is critical to address this issue of high fees. Users and developers expect effective solutions that enable faster and cheaper transactions on the Ethereum network.
After the update that the network has recently undergone, It is expected that the democratization of the network will be a relevant pillar so that network rates can be lowersince there is a greater number of validators in the network, the rates must be standardized even more.
In fact, the base of migration from PoW to PoS has been driven from its beginnings by the savings of commission in transactionsbecause with the new participation system there is an energy saving, contrary to the proof of work system.
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