Following a Brief Fee Spike, Gas Prices to Move Ethereum Drop 76% in 12 Days

Transaction fees on the Ethereum network are dropping again after average fees saw a brief spike on April 5 jumping to $43 per transfer. 12 days later, average ether fees are close to dropping below $10 per transaction and median-sized fees have slid below $4 per transaction. Moreover, layer two (L2) transaction fees have also dropped in recent times as the lowest L2 rate today is $0.03 per transfer.

Average and Median Ethereum Fees Drop

From mid-March up until the first week of April, Ethereum’s average network fees rose from a low of $5.98 per transfer to $43.41 on April 5, 2022. That’s an increase of 625% but after April 5, the average ether gas fee started to drop once again to much lower levels. Today, April 17, 2022, Ethereum’s average network fee to simply send ETH onchain via layer one (L2), is 0.0034 ETH or $10.32 per transfer.

The average network fee is dynamic, not an exact science, and it always changes. It’s also not a hard mandate as the average fee simply represents the average amount of ether users are currently willing to pay to get their ethereum transactions confirmed. The median-sized ethereum transfer fee reflects the fact that network users are paying less than the average to get their ethereum transactions confirmed. On April 17, the median-sized ethereum gas fee is currently 0.0011 ETH or $3.47 per transaction.

Ethereum users paying median-sized network fees are paying 66.37% less than those willing to pay the average gas fee. Similar to the average fee 12 days ago, the median-sized ether fee spiked to $10.31 per transfer on April 5. Again, as mentioned above, the average and median fee is simply the cost to send ether as sending an ERC20 token or swapping a token and interacting with a smart contract will cost a lot more.

Ethereum L2 Fees Slide Lower, Bitcoin Fees 88-90% Lower

Statistics on Sunday indicate that layer two (L2) fees have dropped much lower in recent times as well. Currently, the L2 rollup solution Metis Network is the cheapest on Sunday and will cost $0.03 per transfer. Essentially that means transactions on the Metis Network are 99.70% cheaper than the average onchain transaction fee. In order to swap ERC20 tokens, it will cost $0.16 per transaction using Metis today.

Loopring is the second least expensive L2 rail to use this weekend as it costs $0.05 to send ethereum (ETH). The cost to swap tokens using Loopring is $0.76, at the time of writing. Zksync currently charges $0.05 per transaction as well to send ether and swapping coins will cost around $0.13 per transfer. L2 participants can also leverage Boba Network, Optimism, Polygon Hermez, Aribitrum, and the Aztec Network as well. The optimistic rollup solution Aribitrum One currently costs $0.45 to send ether per transaction and to swap coins it costs $0.62 per transaction.

While onchain fees on Ethereum are lower today, bitcoin (BTC) transfer fees are much lower onchain in comparison. At the time of writing, the cost to send BTC on average is 0.000000084 BTC per byte, which equates to 0.000028 BTC or $1.15 per transaction. The average-sized BTC fee is 88.85% lower than the average ETH fee. Median-sized fees on the Bitcoin network are only 0.0000082 BTC or $0.332 per transfer on Sunday, which is 90.43% cheaper than median-sized fees on Ethereum.