Ethereum gas fees are rising sharply
2 min readOn October 29, 2021, the second largest crypto asset in terms of market capitalization, ETH, reached an all-time high of $ 4,467 per coin, after the Altair beacon chain update was launched and gas fees rose sharply again.
While ETH is testing new price highs, average ETH gas fees are skyrocketing
The two largest crypto assets by market capitalization have had problems with high transfer fees for many years, but this month the transaction fees on Ethereum are again significantly higher than the fees on BTC. BTC transfer fee was as reported bitinfocharts.com around 0.00000015 BTC per byte or $ 3.15 per transaction.
The same web portal tracking transaction fees states that moving an Ethereum will cost around 0.012 ETH or $ 50.53 per transaction. The data show that ETH transfer fees are 1,504% higher than BTC transfer fees.
The cost of transfering Ethereum-based tokens is not much different, but swap tokens through a smart contract are much higher. The token transfer fee is $ 43.13 per transaction and more than $ 94 for swap tokens through interaction with a smart contract.
Layer ETH transaction costs and token swap fees
Moving Ethereum using a second layer mechanism such as Arbitrum or Polygon Hermez is much cheaper than onchain ETH transmissions on the core network. At the time of writing, Transactions based on Polygon Hermez cost about $ 0.25 per transfer, while Lokrring’s Zkrollup L2 solution costs $ 0.74. Zksync will cost the user $ 1.03 and for using Arbitrum One the fee is around $ 4.21. EVM-compatible Optimistic Rollup chain fees today are $ 4.31 per transaction.
Using Loopring to swap tokens is also cheaper than the average price of $ 94 when using the main ETH network. Loopring token swap costs $ 1.07, Optimism’s token swap fee is $ 5.54, and Arbitrum’s swap fees can cost $ 7.29, according to today’s metrics on the analytics website. l2fees.info. As ETH has reached an all-time high, onchain transaction fees are higher than usual after the Altair upgrade, which prepared ETH for the next transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism.
