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Ethereum’s Median Fee Hit a 4-Month Low, while Address Activity Soaring to a 7-Month High

Brian Njuguna   Dec 13, 2021 06:10 2 Min Read


Despite making significant strides in 2021, high gas fees in the Ethereum (ETH) network have been a big headache.

Nevertheless, users have a sigh of relief because Ethereum’s median fees have dropped to $5.50 per transaction from highs of $34.18 last month. On-chain metrics provider Santiment confirmed

“Ethereum's median fees have quietly come back down to an affordable $5.50 per transaction. This is a far cry from the $34.18 per transaction level that the ETH network was demanding near its AllTimeHigh just one month ago.”

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This drop-in fee has been advantageous in pushing Ethereum’s utility levels based on high address activity. Santiment added:

“With ETH fees coming back to earth rapidly with this December price correction, address activity has soared to 7-month high levels. Utility of Ethereum is far more appealing to traders with fees back down to $5.50 per transaction.”

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Ethereum has made notable steps this year, given that more money has flowed into its network compared to Bitcoin. This has been boosted by a couple of use cases like ETH being the backbone of the booming decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) sectors. 

Furthermore, Ethereum recently showed better performance in annual returns than Bitcoin, with a 663% gain. 

Ethereum 2.0 continues to scale the heights

According to crypto analytic firm Glassnode:

“The total value in the ETH 2.0 Deposit Contract just reached an ATH of 8,599,010 ETH.”

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Ethereum 2.0, also known as the Beacon Chain, was launched in December 2020 and was regarded as a game-changer that sought to transit the current proof-of-work (POW) consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake (POS) framework.

The POS algorithm allows the confirmation of blocks to be more energy-efficient and requires validators to stake Ether instead of solving a cryptographic puzzle. As a result, it is touted to be more environmentally friendly and cost-effective. ETH 2.0 is also expected to improve scalability through sharding.


Image source: Shutterstock

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