Ethereum: gas halved in a month

As of late November, gas on Ethereum transactions has dropped. 

The gas for Ethereum transactions

Taking as a reference, the average cost per transaction expressed in dollars until December 1 was above $50, although it had also dropped below $40, but only temporarily in the previous days. 

However, as of December 2, it started to fall in a wider and more lasting way.

Already on December 12, it fell below 23$, while on December 26, it also fell below 20$. 

So from December 1 until the 26th, it has more than halved. 

Considering the median of the average cost of each transaction, on December 1, it was above $26, while on December 19, it was below $9. Now it’s around $15. 

In this case, from the beginning of December until today, there has been almost a halving. 

Note that the current levels are similar to those of October 23, despite a different ETH price. 

In fact, on October 23, the ETH price was above $4,000, while now it is below $3,900. On the other hand, on December 1, it was even above 4,700$, and this leads one to believe that it was the price that pushed ETH and ERC-20 token holders to make more transactions than usual, making the gas grow. 

What is really surprising, though, is the fact that a year ago, the average cost per transaction was less than $5, while the median was just over $2. 

Bitcoin and Ethereum, costs in comparison

Comparing these dynamics with, for example, those of Bitcoin, we find that the average cost per transaction in BTC instead fell throughout 2021, dropping from $8 to $2, with the median dropping from $4 to $1 or less. 

In other words, if 12 months ago the cost of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain was comparable to that of transactions on Bitcoin, now it is ten times higher, although in the last month it has decreased. 

In addition to the higher volume of transactions caused by a higher value of tokens, two other factors are impacting. 

The first is that more and more BTC transactions are not transited on the blockchain but are executed on the second layer Lightning Network, while Ethereum transactions on the second layer struggle to take off. 

The second is the fees burn introduced since August, and that has probably caused the cost of fees to double. 

Instead, DeFi’s real boom has not increased the overall daily volume of transactions recorded on the Ethereum blockchain, as the current one is perfectly in line with 12 months ago.