- Ethereum transaction fees have been on a sharp rise recently, continuing the trend started earlier this year.
- Before the turn of the year spike of 510%, ETH transaction fees were only $0.06.
- Fees have exceeded $0.37, and Vitalik Buterin suggested a short-term solution while waiting for ETH 2.0.
Ethereum’s median transaction fees have surged quite highly recently, reaching a two-year high. In addition to this, the Ethereum network continues to struggle under heavy congestion.
When everyone looked to Vitalik Buterin for a solution, Ethereum’s creator confirmed that the project’s off-chain scaling solution will have to do for the following two years.
Ethereum fees on the rise
Buterin’s statement came on June 30th, and it basically means that Ethereum has to make do with what it currently has for the time being. This would last until the project’s biggest upgrade, Ethereum 2.0, finally sees its long-awaited launch.
Meanwhile, ETH will likely continue to struggle. While the project is more than capable of handling transaction fees most of the time, it did experience issues on June 28th and 29th.
During this time, the median transaction fee spiked by 60%. The fee surged from $0.23 to as high as $0.37. The spike was also quite sudden and unexpected, even though it comes as a continuation of a 510% spike that took place since the start of the year. Before this far bigger spike, ETH fees were only $0.06.
Of course, calculating the average fee is not that precise, as it is done by dividing the sum of all fees by the number of transactions. A few higher fees could easily give inaccurate results. The median fee provides a more trustworthy representation of the situation.
Buterin has a short-term solution
The fact is that the cost of using Ethereum is on the rise, and Buterin tried to provide insight into a short-term scaling plan that would be able to help the project.
Simply put, once Ethereum 2.0 arrives, it should be able to handle large quantities of data. Not only that , but it will be able to do it before it becomes capable of actually computing this data.
In the meantime, Buterin also had a request for those who are ‘just moving tokens around.’
Using a ZK-rollup tool would likely help out a lot, especially when it comes to reducing median and average fees for ETH.