Long criticized over its high network costs, the transaction gas fees of the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain have recently recorded a seven-day average nearly 40 times higher than that of Bitcoin (BTC).
As a matter of fact, Ethereum’s seven-day average fees on April 5 amounted to $24,487,397, which is 39.29 times or 190.1% more than $623,285 – the seven-day fee average of Bitcoin, according to the data acquired from the analytics platform CryptoFees.info on April 6.
Indeed, the network’s high fees have long presented a major challenge to its usability and a threat to the vision of creating a decentralized economy, as Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, himself has admitted.
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Ethereum gas fees lowest in months
That said, despite being the leader in the daily and seven-day averages, Ethereum’s transaction fees are at their lowest levels for more than eight months, currently sitting at $5.81. In contrast, the average gas fee on November 8, 2021, stood at $62.85, as on-chain and social metrics platform Santiment tweeted on April 6.
The current fees are the continuation of the steady drop over time. Specifically, Finbold reported in mid-March on Ethereum’s lowering transaction gas fees which at that time stood at $8.20. For comparison, the fees one week before stood at $11.14, recording a six-month low.
As reported by Finbold, Ethereum is working to switch to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus, with the planned Merge upgrade, officially marking the end of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) period for Ethereum and introducing all of the PoS benefits to the platform and its users.
ETH price analysis
At press time, Ethereum traded at $3,334, down 5.26% over 24 hours and 1.90% across the previous seven days.
It’s worth mentioning that the market capitalization of the second-largest cryptocurrency by this indicator is currently $402.14 billion, according to the CoinMarketCap data.
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