Ethereum Fees Hit a New All-Time High

The sky appears to be the limit for ethereum (ETH) transaction fees as the median price of transactions touched almost USD 3.5 yesterday, reaching a new all-time high and spiking for the first time since a bug apparently derailed the decentralized finance (DeFi) Yam project. Also, total gas fees reached a whopping USD 7.1 million on August 30.

Yam-inflated figures saw total gas fees peak at USD 8.6 million on August 13. But just after a bug wiped out 90% of the Yam token market capitalization within the space of a few minutes, those figures dropped all the way down to USD 2.56 million. This dip appears to have been very short-lived indeed, though, with yield farming continuing to grow and ETH fee figures starting to skyrocket again beginning on August 28, per BitInfoCharts data.

Yam may have had its day, but DeFi apps, which most commonly operate on the Ethereum blockchain network, appear to be going strong.

The much-awaited Ethereum 2.0 launch cannot come soon enough for some, who hope that this event will finally see gas fees drop to more reasonable levels.

Per a post on the Daily Gwei by Anthony Sassano, the co-founder of Etherhub and the product marketing manager at SetProtocol, help could come in the form of two promising leads on the network.

Sassano, referencing a series of Twitter posts from Tim Beiko, Product Manager at ConsenSys, makes note of two Ethereum clients named Vulcanize’s Geth fork and Besu.

These clients, he notes, “have an implementation built for Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-1559.” The proposal, notes Sassano, “could improve the fee market on Ethereum and introduce a burn mechanism that would burn some ETH on every transaction.”

However, experts say that extensive work still needs to be done on these clients, EIP-1559 and other potential ETH solutions before an upgrade materializes.

He forecasted,

“If I had to give an estimated time of arrival on EIP-1559, I would say maybe (big maybe) within the next six to 12 months if we can rally the community around getting this into a standalone Ethereum network upgrade.”

The expert added a caveat, however, writing,

“Of course, this ETA is moot if there are any big roadblocks that pop up over the next few months – please don’t hold me to this estimation!”

Online, social media was awash with commenters who chose to see the light side of developments, with some claiming, tongue-in-cheek, that climbing fees were part of a grand plan from founders to get ETH owners to HODL their tokens – rather than cash in or exchange for other coins.

And, of course, there was no shortage of memes…

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This article was updated at UTC 13:09 – new ETH fees data was added.