Amid a growing memecoin frenzy, gas fees on the ethereum network have soared to multi-month highs. High transaction fees have multiplied Ethereum’s daily revenues compared to Bitcoin (BTC). While ethereum supporters cheered the revenue boost, many others were quick to point to the network's growing congestion and difficulties processing transactions.
Memecoins such as TROLL, APED, and BOBO replaced ETH (ETH), WETH, and USDT (USDT) in the top 10. As of April 20, the average gas price for an Ethereum transaction was 81.94 gwei, up from 60.82 gwei on April 19 and 44.42 gwei last year — a 34.74% increase from April 19 and April 20, 2022, respectively and 84.46%. Gwei is a denomination of ether representing one billionth of an ETH. Anthony Sassano, an independent ethereum educator, shared a surge in the ethereum network’s daily fee revenue and said the second-largest blockchain brought in 28 times more revenue than bitcoin. He also cites Ethereum layer 2 platforms like Arbitrum One outperforming the BTC network in terms of daily revenue due to the ongoing meme frenzy.
The main argument for ethereum proponents is that high gas fees and the resulting higher revenues underscore the network's growing usability. However, many on Crypto Twitter were quick to point out that the widespread use they were referring to was simply a few thousand users gambling on memecoins. Some users reportedly paid hundreds of dollars in gas fees, while others complained about having to pay more for gas than the actual transaction.
Another major reason for the spike in gas fees has been blamed on maximum extractable value (MEV) trading bots, which are front-running memecoin trades at scale. The bot in question, jaredfromsubway.eth, has been the top gas spender over the past 24 hours, spending 455 ETH ($950,000) and using 7% of the total network gas. In the past two months, it has spent more than 3,720 ETH ($7 million) in gas fees and executed more than 180,000 transactions. Subway-themed bots are using sandwich trading techniques to make millions while clogging the web.fac
