ETH Transactional Fees Back To August Levels: Analysis

ETH transactional fees are back to the levels seen in August which is around $2 meaning it is low compared to the September average but still high compared to other moments of the blockchain’s existence as we are reading in our Ethereum latest news.

ETH transactional fees are recovering from the huge DeFi blast after reaching record highs in September. Now the network seems to have reached a calm moment during Octobers’ first days. The average transaction fees are above $2 according to BitInfoCharts and this milestone represents a huge drop of more than 80% from the peak reached on September 2. After hitting record-high levels, the network returned to normal but a further rise in mid-September catapulted the usage costs back to a new peak which was crushed by the spikes in ATH.

Since that time, the fees returned to normal and the trend seems to be down for the ETH user’s wishes. However, despite the talks of a huge drop, the transitional fees are still high as in January they averaged $0.07 and they surpassed the $1 dollar mark in 2019. Currently, ETH proves the usability of blockchain technologies thanks to the smart contracts and dapps that run on that blockchain. In addition to the group of innovations, there are stablecoins and Defi projects that raised ETH’s usability to standards that were never before seen in the industry.

ETH managed to surpass BTC in terms of moved value thanks to Defi and stablecoins. However, the fees showed that the scalability is not a theoretical debate but it is a need to support the current standards and global adoption. Buterin himself complained about the high fees:

 “The $17.76 in fees it took me to make a bet on Augur last week itself makes present-day Augur very much “for the niche people and not for the world.”

Everything could change with the upcoming ETH 2.0 but it will be a long time before a complete implementation which is the transition to a PoS algorithm that promises lower fees and high network efficiency.  Other implementations ensure the ability to support thousands of transactions per second so the fees will not be a problem. Buterin believes that L2 solutions are just as important as other improvements to the blockchain’s code. However, despite the optimism, there’s a long way to go and it seems to be no other solution but to wait:

 “I do think it’s important to note that at least in the short term, as far as I can tell we have no choice. The L1 is nearly unusable for many classes of applications, and there’s no non-L2 path that can get us to scalability in the short-to-medium term. “