The recent London update of the Ethereum (ETH) network was one of the most anticipated in recent times. With it came the proposed EIP-1559 upgrade that would ease the costs of transaction fees, also known as commissions. However, the situation has had, so far, the opposite effect.
The metrics show that rates have not decreased since August 5 when the update – a non-contentious hard fork – was triggered. According to Bitinfocharts records, the average commissions on the network that day were $ 14.6. Ten days later the figure rose to 21.7 dollars, on average.
At the time of publishing this article, the average commission on the network is 11 dollars, well above those registered in June or July when they were between $ 2 and $ 9. The need to reduce commission payments became more apparent in May when the average per transaction reached nearly $ 70.
London brought with it a new method of commission payments that would benefit users before miners, in theory. The improvement speaks of two types of fees: the first is a base commission for the transaction to be included in the block, but which is then burned. The second is a “tip” or amount that the user must give to the miners as a “priority rate” , as has been reported by CriptoNoticias.
The problem is that, although commission burning is happening, traders are paying higher prices to ensure their transactions are processed as fast as possible. fast as possible. The burning of ETH has already caused some Ethereum blocks to be deflationary, another of the future targets of the EIP-1559 upgrade. However, users still do not see improvements in rates.
NFT boom is affecting Ethereum
What is happening on the Ethereum network is due, in part, to a significant increase in number of transactions being processed. The rise of non-fungible tokens (NFT) and the markets that trade this type of digital asset are congesting the blockchain of smart contracts.
According to figures from Dappradar, for example, in the last 24 hours NFT’s market, OpenSea, shows an 18% increase in the number of transactions. Other platforms that also register increases in operations are Rarible and SuperRare. We must also mention everything that has arisen around the NFT-based game, Axie Infinity and its enormous popularity among thousands of users.
Currently, on the Ethereum network they are processed about 1.2 million transactions every 24 hours , according to data from Etherscan. That gives an average of almost 14 operations per second that are currently registered on the blockchain.
In addition, another aspect that must also be considered is the use given to the network by decentralized finance (DeFi). Right now the amount of blocked funds is approaching its all-time high. DeFi Pulse metrics show that some 74 billion dollars are committed, in May the figure reached 87 billion dollars. This indicates that activity in the DeFi markets is gradually increasing again.
