Ethereum Transaction Fees to Miners Surpassed Uncle Rewards Last Month

Ethereum transaction fees paid to miners surpassed the cost of maintaining the network last month.

According to a series of tweets by Ankit Chiplunkar, research lead at The Token Analyst, Ethereum transaction fees paid to miners exceeded the uncle reward in March 2020. Ethereum users paid 26,100 ETH ($4.4 million) in transaction fees to miners last month versus the uncle reward of 20,400 ETH ($3.4 million). 

Chiplunkar explained the discrepancy between miner fees and the uncle reward, saying that users are paying more than the cost of maintaining ethereum’s network on a 15-second blocktime. 

A look into $ETH miner rewards 👇

1/2) Fees paid to miners (ETH 26.1K) exceeded the uncle reward (ETH 20.4k) paid to miners in March 2020.

i.e. the fees paid by the users are now greater than the cost paid by the network to maintain a 15sec blocktime.

data: @thetokenanalyst pic.twitter.com/jXXXBiWYRW

— Ankit Chiplunkar (@ankitchiplunkar) April 14, 2020

The research lead also showed that fees paid by smart contract transactions have outweighed basic ether transactions since January 2019. Last month, smart contract fees were 8.6 times greater than those of regular transactions on ethereum’s network. 

2/2) Since Jan 2019 the fees paid by smart contract transactions are greater than fees paid by basic $ETH transactions.

In Mar 2020 alone, the fees paid by smart contract transactions (ETH 23.4K) was 8.6 times that of fees paid by basic Eth transactions (ETH 2.7k). pic.twitter.com/5jIXvCBge7

— Ankit Chiplunkar (@ankitchiplunkar) April 14, 2020

One user pointed out the discrepancy in last month’s miner fees and uncle reward may have represented an anomaly, as the crypto markets experienced one of the worst single days of losses on Mar. 12. 

Seems like kind of a stretch to say “now”, because it’s only a 1 month dataset, which includes the “Black Thursday” event which saw an irregular uptick in transactions due to large price fluctuations.

— ⚡KAMES.ΞTH 🐺 (@KamesCG) April 14, 2020

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