According to recent data by media reports, the Ethereum network’s gas fee has recently hit a multi-month high due to the surge in popularity of memecoins. This has led to a mixed response from supporters and critics alike. Some Ethereum supporters view this as a positive sign of the network’s growth in daily revenue, while others are concerned about network congestion and the high fees associated with processing transactions.
Interestingly, the surge in memecoin usage has led to an atypical change in the altcoins that burned the most gas in the top 10 list, with memecoins like TROLL, APED, and BOBO among the top spenders, rather than the more traditional WETH, ETH, and USDT.
As of April 20, the average gas cost for carrying out transactions on the Ethereum network stood at 81.94 gwei, representing a significant increase from the previous day and from the same day in the previous year. Ethereum teacher Anthony Sassano highlighted that the network’s revenue was 28 times that of Bitcoin, and layer-2 platforms such as Arbitrum One were outperforming the BTC network due to the meme frenzy.
Despite these positive signs, Some users on Crypto Twitter were quick to point out that the substantial network usage referred to by Ethereum supporters is mainly attributed to a small group of individuals engaging in memecoin speculation. Some users have reported paying hundreds of dollars in gas fees, while others have complained about paying more in fees than the actual transaction cost.
A major factor behind the surge in Ethereum’s gas fees is the use of a trading bot called jaredfromsubway.eth, which is exploiting the trading of memecoins on a large scale. This bot has emerged as the top spender of gas over the last 24 hours, accounting for 7% of the total gas used and spending 455 ETH (equivalent to $950,000). In the past two months, it has spent more than 3,720 ETH (around $7 million) in gas fees while performing over 180,000 transactions.
While the growth in memecoin usage has brought about an increase in revenue for the Ethereum network, concerns over network congestion and the difficulty of usage have also been raised.
