Ethereum’s average fee increases by over 80% and approaches $5 per transfer

This week, however, Ethereum’s fees have risen, as data from October 10 shows that average fees have peaked at $4.75 per transaction.

Ethereum’s average gas fees jumped more than 80% in 3 days

Ethereum’s gas fees increased 84% from $2.58 per transaction on October 8 to $4.75 per transfer on October 10. Ethereum’s fees have not exceeded $4 since August 11, 2022, about 61 days ago.

Statistics from bitinfocharts.com show that the median transfer fee on Oct. 10 is $2.2 per transfer. Etherscan.io’s gas tracker also shows an increase as today’s high priority fees are about 27 gwei or $0.62 per transfer.

On 44 days ago or August 28, 2022, etherscan.io’s gas tracker shows that the fees were lower before the merger, as the high priority fee was about 11 gwei or $0.34 per transfer. While the fee is about $0.62 for a high priority transfer, exchanging and moving an ERC20 token can cost more.

An Opensea sale costs $2.13 per transaction today, up from $1.17 per transaction on August 28. A Uniswap transaction has an estimated cost of about $5.49 and 44 days ago it was about $3.03.

Sending an ERC20 token as USDT or USDC will cost $1.61 today and on August 18 it was about $0.89 per transaction. Layer two (L2) fees are still much cheaper than Ethereum’s onchain transfer statistics.

The Metis network costs about $0.01 per transfer. ETH while Loopring will cost $0.02. Zksync and Arbitrum will both cost about $0.03 per transfer. ETH and Optimism is a bit more expensive today at $0.10 per transfer.

The Boba network is about $0.15 per transaction and the Aztec network is about $0.25 per transfer. The cost of exchanging an ERC20 using an L2 protocol can cost between $0.05 and $0.32, depending on the L2 chosen.

Since the September 15 merger, while ETH fees have increased, block times have been faster than they were before the transition, but only by a few milliseconds. Pre-merger block times are 0.244 minutes while post-merger block intervals are 0.201 minutes, 17% faster than before September 15.

While many people assumed that gas fees would be cheaper after the merge, the Ethereum Foundation emphasized well before the transition that the merge upgrade would not affect gas fees and throughput.

“The merge renders the use of proof-of-work obsolete, moving to proof-of-stake for consensus, but does not significantly change the parameters that directly influence network capacity or throughput,” the Ethereum Foundation said on Aug. 16.