Ethereum Fees On The Rise Again, What's Driving This?

On-chain data shows that Ethereum transaction fees have been rising again recently. Here’s what could be behind this trend.

Ethereum Average Fees Has Registered A Notable Uptick Recently

In a new insight post, the on-chain analytics firm Santiment talked about how the Ethereum network has recently become more expensive. The metric of interest here is the “Average Fees,” which keeps track of the average fees that ETH users are currently attaching with their transfers.

How much fees senders might be willing to pay comes down to the activity level the blockchain is witnessing. In times of high traffic, transfers can get stuck for a while, as ETH has only a limited capacity to handle transactions. Those looking to beat the crowd, thus, go with a higher-than-average fee.

This user competition is what governs how high the average would get. With little activity on the network, senders will go for the cheapest amount possible, as there isn’t much incentive to pay a high fee.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Ethereum Average Fees over the last few months:

Ethereum Average Fees

Looks like the value of the metric has been heading up in recent days | Source: Santiment

As is visible above, the Ethereum Average Fee has been climbing recently and currently sits at $3.2, the highest level since early August. However, this previous spike in August, although great in scale, had lasted very briefly.

From the chart, it’s visible that this previous spike had coincided with the crash that the cryptocurrency had observed around then. Thus, the fee surge was because the investors had been making panic moves and were willing to pay high to get them done fast.

Before this spike, the last time a sustained trend in fees similar to the recent one had been observed was in late May. As such, the latest value of the metric has effectively been the highest point in four months.

Now, as for what’s behind this latest trend, an obvious reason would seem like the rally the asset has recently enjoyed. Sharp price action attracts attention, so the Average Fees generally go up.

However, details of the fee breakdown reveal that the normal Ethereum traders may not drive the increase.

Ethereum Fees Distribution

The distribution of the ETH fees over the past week | Source: Santiment

As it turns out, Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) has recently been the token providing the largest contribution to network fees. As Santiment notes:

The dominance of WETH in fee contributions indicates that traders are heavily utilizing DeFi platforms, likely engaging in liquidity pools, trading, and other financial activities that require WETH as a base asset.