Due to the hype around meme cryptocurrencies, gas fees on the Ethereum (ETH) network have risen to a 10-month high.
According to Glassnode, the median gas price on the Ethereum blockchain on the seven-day moving average (7DMA) reached 43.641 gwei. The last time this value was observed was June 30, 2022.
Gwei is the symbol for the cryptocurrency ETH: 1,000,000,000 gwei equals 1 ETH, and 1 gwei equals 0.000000001 ETH.
The last time the 7DMA median gas fee peaked at 150 gwei was in May 2022, but by July 2022 it had dropped significantly. By September, the indicator gradually stabilized, staying around the 20 gwei mark - then the Ethereum network went through the “Merger”.
The cost of using Ethereum has been a stumbling block since the DeFi summer of 2020, when the average gas fee reached 700 gwei.
During this period, network activity increased sharply, which was due to the hype around yield farming protocols such as Curve, Compound and Yearn, where people flocked en masse to earn profits.
Ethereum is built in such a way that gas fees increase precisely when network traffic and the need to verify transactions increase.
And while some people speculated that the Merger and the move to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus would solve this problem, it has become clear that gas fees are still largely determined by the demand for blocks and the network's ability to meet that demand. rather than a consensus mechanism.
Recently, the Ethereum network has again seen an increase in network activity, and all because of new meme tokens, some of which brought profits of thousands of percent to early investors.
One of these crypto assets is PEPE, which in a few days rose to sixth place in the ranking of market capitalization of meme coins, reaching $89.1 million.
On April 20, PEPE reached a local maximum of $0.000000391704 Source: CoinGecko.com
