ETH’s Great Gas Fee Heist: The Plot Thickens!

ETH‘s Great Gas Fee Heist: The Plot Thickens! 🤑

Well, well, well, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! 🤣 It appears that Ethereum‘s Dencun upgrade, which went live on March 13, 2024, has been a bit of a mixed bag, old chap. On the one hand, the network’s average gas fee has plummeted by a whoppin’ 95%, making transactions as cheap as a plate of Jeeves’s famous kedgeree at Drones Club. 🍴

But, alas, on the other hand, the price of Ether (ETH) has taken a bit of a tumble, down 53% since the upgrade. One shudders to think what the esteemed Dominik Harz, co-founder of Build on Bitcoin (BOB), must be thinking. “Ethereum is in trouble, old bean,” he’s likely to say. “The price decline has erased all the DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL) gains since Trump’s election. It’s a bit of a kerfuffle, if you ask me!” 🤦‍♂️

But, of course, there’s more to the story, my dear fellow. The upgrade, which merged two significant upgrades – the Cancun upgrade for Ethereum’s execution layer and the Deneb upgrade for its consensus layer – introduced nine Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) aimed at reducing transaction costs and improving scalability. It’s a bit like trying to untangle a plate of spaghetti, but someone’s got to do it, eh? 🍝

Now, let’s take a gander at some figures, shall we? Prior to the upgrade, gas fees were as high as 72 gwei. But now, they’re down to a mere 2.7 gwei, making normal transactions significantly less expensive. Token swapping on Ethereum, for instance, used to cost about $86 in fees, but now it’s a mere $0.39. Selling NFTs used to cost about $145 in gas fees, but now it’s a paltry $0.65. It’s a veritable feast for the financially frugal, if you will! 🎉

But, as the great philosopher, Bertie Wooster, once said, “It’s not the winning that matters, it’s the taking part.” And Ethereum’s upcoming big upgrade, Pectra, is already running into issues. The upgrade was released on the Sepolia testnet on March 5, 2025, but developers began experiencing errors. Blocks were mined with zero transactions, and error messages kept popping up. It’s a bit like trying to get a cat to do tricks, if you know what I mean! 🐈

But fear not, dear reader, for the Ethereum team has rolled out a patch, and the testnet is now stabilizing. Transactions are being processed normally, and all is well in the world of Ethereum, or so it seems. After all, as the great Jeeves would say, “It’s always something, sir.” 🙄

2025-03-13 19:33

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