ETH’s price is not the only Ethereum metric rising in the past few days as the transaction fees on the network have skyrocketed to an average price of above $10. The popular decentralized exchange Uniswap still accounts for the largest share with over 30,000 ETH spent in the past 30 days.
According to data from the monitoring resource Ycharts, the average fees on the Ethereum network have surged recently to above $10. This development came following months in which the gas paid sat below $5.
Nevertheless, exceeding $10 means that the average fees have increased to their highest levels since September 2020.
This increase is a direct consequence of the high number of pending transactions on the Ethereum network. Etherscan data reveals that there’re over 150,000 such transactions as of writing these lines.
Uniswap accounts for the largest share, with nearly $13 million (31,700 ETH) spent in the past 30 days. The most widely used stablecoin, Tether (USDT), takes the second place with $10.5 million (or 26,200 ETH) spent.
Apart from a well-known scam – SmartWay Forsage – the top ten is completed mostly by other DeFi projects. This caused multiple cryptocurrency members to complain on Twitter about the high fees, making smaller DeFi swaps financially challenging.
At the same time, others pointed out that the rising fees have made Ethereum mining significantly more profitable lately. Recent reports suggested that ETH miners have earned more money than BTC miners.
The rising fees on the Ethereum network come as the price of the native cryptocurrency went on a wild ride. On a macro scale, ETH has been on a roll since late September 2020 when it struggled with maintaining above $300.
However, the bull run in the crypto market took Ether by storm and drove it to its highest price tag in nearly three years at $1,170 earlier today. This represented a 290% increase in less than four months.
Nevertheless, the second-largest cryptocurrency started retracing almost immediately after reaching its record. In the hours that followed, ETH dumped by more than 20% and reached a current intraday low beneath $900.
