On Saturday, the average network fee for transfers on Ethereum dropped to 0.0016 ether, or $1.67, reaching a low not seen since November 2020. As Ethereum gas fees have been steadily declining since May 11, 2022, average fees on Saturday have been as low as 32 gwei, or $0.69, per transfer.
On July 2, 2022, Ethereum’s average gas costs reached a low that had not been seen in 19 months or since November 12, 2020. The amount of ethereum (ETH) needed to push a transaction onto the blockchain network is known as the gas or network fee.
Similar to the Bitcoin (BTC) network, ETH rewards its miners with gas fees in exchange for confirming transfers. Early ETH transfers were insignificant, and from August 2015 to July 2016, the average gas fee per ETH transfer was less than a U.S. penny.
Between July 2016 to May 2017, Ethereum network fees were between $0.01 to $0.10 a transfer. Nowadays Ethereum fees are a bit more pricey and on May 12, 2021, average fees reached $69 per transaction.
Between August 2021 to February 2022, fees did not drop lower than $20 per transfer. At times throughout that period, fees hit $30, $40, and $50 increments for every transaction made depending on the day. On May 1, 2022, the average network fee jumped to $196 per transfer, thanks to a popular non-fungible token (NFT) sale that day.
The aforementioned fees only apply to sending ether as well, and an Opensea contract, decentralized exchange (dex) swap, or an ERC20 transfer can cost even more.
Median-Sized Fees Tap $0.69 per transaction, L2 Fees Slip Lower
On July 2, 2022, average fees tapped a low of 0.0016 ether or $1.67 per transfer. The last time fees on the Ethereum network were this low was in mid-November 2020. On November 12, 2020, the average ETH fee was 0.0034 ether per transfer or $1.55.
Moreover, on Saturday, the web portal etherscan.io’s gas tracker shows the highest Ethereum network fee slipped as low as 32 gwei or $0.69 per high priority transfer. Etherscan.io’s data indicates an Opensea sale will cost $5.05 for the transaction, a Uniswap trade is $6.10, and to forward an ERC20 like tether (USDT) it’s $1.79 per transaction at the time of writing.
The median transaction fee, according to metrics from bitinfocharts.com, is 0.00065 ether, or $0.695 per transaction. Layer-two (L2) transaction fees are cheaper as a result of Ethereum’s average and median network fees being much lower than they have been in the previous 596 days.
According to data from L2fees.info, a transaction on Loopring costs less than a penny, a transfer on Zksync is $0.01, and a transaction on Metis Network costs $0.01. On Saturday, optimism is $0.03, Boba Network is about $0.06, and Arbitrum transaction fees are $0.10. This weekend, transactions with Polygon Hermez and Aztec Network each cost $0.25 and $0.35 respectively.
