Increasing Flashbots Usage Crashes Ethereum Gas Fees

Ethereum gas fees have dropped by a massive 50 percent and observers say the significant decrease is as a result of the widespread use of Flashbots by traders in place of Priority Gas Auction (PGA) bots.

Ethereum Gas Fees Crash 

Ethereum remains the leading distributed ledger (DLT) network for smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) and DeFi. However,  the exponential adoption recorded by the network in recent years has not only enriched hodlers and miners, but has also sent gas fees to the moon, to the detriment of everyday users. 

While the Ethereum development team is working tirelessly to permanently fix the issue of exorbitant and unpredictable gas fees, a Reddit post on April 11, has revealed that traders have found a way to tackle the gas fee menace.

According to the post, gas fees on the Ethereum network have been slashed by a massive 50 percent, as more and more traders are now adopting Flashbots in place of PGA bots, which are designed to increase gas fees.

“Gas fees on Ethereum have reduced by almost 50 percent due to adoption of flashbots by traders in place of PGA bots. In the last 24-hours, the average gas fees for transactions has come down from around 120 gwei to roughly 65 gwei currently,” wrote a Redditor with the username Set1Less.

A Step in the Right Direction

For the uninitiated, Fleshbots is a research and development organization that claims to be dedicated to mitigating the risks and negative effects of the current miner extractable value (MEV) techniques on Ethereum and other blockchains.

While Flashbots focus on reducing gas fees, Priority Gas Auction (PGA) bots, on the other hand, do exactly the opposite, by prioritizing the transactions with higher gas fees, leaving those with meagre transaction fees to get stuck in the queue.

“Right now over 58 percent of hashrate is achieved on flashbots and PGA bots are finding it hard to compete. As flashbots continue to gain a larger share of hash rate, then gas prices should continue decreasing,” added Set1Less.

At a time  when experts have hinted that the implementation of the EIP-1559 may not reduce gas fees on Ethereum, with some mining pools already rolling out sophisticated MEV programs to further enrich miners, traders’ adoption of Flashbots is definitely a move in the right direction.

The price of ether (ETH) is trading at $2,159, with a market cap of $248.95 billion, as seen on CoinMarketCap at the time of writing.