In 43 days, the Ethereum network could finally see a full transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) via The Merge. Meanwhile, during the last 38 days, Ethereum’s layer one (L1) onchain transaction fees have dropped below the $5 mark and tumbled even lower by the end of July. At the time of writing, the average Ethereum network fee is 0.00086 ether or $1.46 per transfer. Median-sized fees are even less, as statistics show transfer fees have been as low as $0.21 to $0.576 per transaction on Sunday morning (EST).
Ethereum Gas Costs Remain At Lowest Rates Since December 2020, Ether Transfer Tops OpenC’s Burn Rate
For some time now, Ethereum data charges for transacting on the network have been much lower than usual. In fact, the average Ethereum network fee today is 0.00086 Ether, or $1.46 per transfer, a drop not seen since December 12, 2020.
Essentially, a gas fee is the quantity of ethereum (ETH) required to transfer data onchain, and the fee to simply push ETH is cheaper than the fees tied to transferring an ERC20 token and interacting with a smart contract.
While the average Ethereum network fee is around $1.46 per transfer today, stats from etherscan.io’s gas tracker show that gas fees range between 5 and 6 qwei per transfer, or $0.21 to $0.32. Gas Tracker also indicates that the cost of executing an OpenC sale can range between $0.73 to $1.10 per transaction, and that decentralized exchange (DX) swaps can cost anywhere between $1.88 to $2.82 per transfer. .
To push an ERC20 token like USDT or USDC, the transfer cost is estimated to be around $0.55 to $0.83 per transfer on Sunday morning (EST). Data from bitinfocharts.com shows Sunday’s median-sized fees are 0.00034 ether or $0.576 per transaction. Ethereum transfers are a large contributor to the burning of ETH that stems from Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559.
OpenC was the largest contributor to the 2,573,837 Ethereum (ETH) destroyed so far. However, with 232,233 ETH burned so far, Ethereum transfers are now the biggest contributor to ether burns. As the supply growth of ETH increases to 5.5 million per year, the deflation burn mechanism of EIP-1559 destroys approximately 0.2 million Ether annually.
Since EIP-1559’s inception, traditional ethereum transactions equaled approximately 156,422,214 transactions and roughly 649.79 ether was destroyed during the last 24 hours from ETH transactions and a variety of other types of data transfers.
L2 Fees Offers Cheap Ethereum Transfer Option
As far as Layer Two (L2) transactions are concerned, fees via L2 are much cheaper than L1. At the time of writing, Loopring and Zksync offer the cheapest L2 alternatives. The looping fee is $0.01 per transaction, while the Zksync fee is also one US penny per transaction value. The cost of swapping tokens using these L2 platforms can be a touch higher, as the estimated Zksync swap fee is $0.02 today, but the looping swapping fee is up from $0.42 per transaction.
Optimism L2 gas costs are roughly $0.03 per transaction, while Arbitrum One can cost $0.05 per transfer. To swap via Optimism’s platform, estimates show it could cost a user $0.05, while Arbitrum swaps are estimated to be around $0.08 today. On August 7, L2 fees are also cheaper on Metis, Boba, and Aztec networks and Polygon Hermez as well.
