While the debate surrounding Ethereum’s high gas fees have been a major pain point, the latest spike comes amidst the PEPE memecoin hysteria that has put tremendous pressure on the network once again.
Traders are paying thousands of dollars for a transaction as Ethereum’s gas fees surged above a one-year high.
- In the latest development, a trader ended up paying 64 ETH for a single transaction on May 8th. According to an update from the blockchain tracker, ‘Whale Alert,’ the user paid around $119,157 just to send 84 WETH.
- It is important to note that transaction fees on Ethereum have climbed much higher levels ranging between $50 to $70 in 2021. But the figures have been low since the market crashed in May 2022.
- The excitement surrounding PEPE can be attributed to the revival in gas fees.
- As such, the average transaction fee surged to $27.62 on May 5, a level that was last seen almost a year ago. Since the memecoin’s launch on April 18th, average gas fees have increased by a whopping 115%.
- However, the mainnet isn’t the only network that has been hit by high gas fees. Layer 2s – which are designed to reduce transaction costs – were not spared as well as network demand shot up.
- Notably, zero-knowledge proof-based (ZK) rollups witnessed fees for swapping tokens surge between $2-$11 for solutions such as Polygon zkEVM, Starknet, and zkSync Era mainnet.