NFT Mania Sends Ethereum Gas Prices to 14 Week High

Ethereum users are suffering again as transaction fees have spiked to their highest levels for 3 months. According to Bitinfocharts, the average transaction fee has surged to $27.23 yesterday, an increase of around 240% since the beginning of August.

The last time gas was this expensive was on May 19, when average prices spiked to $60 before that was the all-time high for gas at $70 on May 12.

These prices are average, so operations such as token swapping or smart contract activities are likely to be higher. According to Etherscan’s gas tracker, a Uniswap token swap can cost as much as $30 at the moment.

Cryptofees has reported that the Ethereum network generated a whopping $32.7 million in fees yesterday. This is 98% more than Bitcoin, which generated $629K in-network fees on August 26.

Record Month for NFT Sales

Nonfungible tokens are the cause of the gas spike as the hype mounts once again. According to Nonfungible, August will be the highest month in terms of sales, having already notched up $900 million over the past 30 days.

NFT marketplace OpenSea is the biggest gas guzzler at the moment, with around $5.7 million in network fees generated over the past 24 hours. This represents almost 21% of the total gas used on Ethereum over the past day. Axie Infinity, which was recently listed on Coinbase, is also up there, having chewed $933K in gas over the past 24 hours, according to Etherscan.

Even NFT investors have started to slow down in light of the hefty transaction fees.

Yep pretty much all NFT markets..

Not buying any more NFTs tonight though unless they’re > 1ETH value because it’s not worth spending $200 gas fee on anything cheaper. 😑

Damn gas fees. (yes I know about SOL and AVAX NFTs I’m just a boomer and haven’t set up my wallet yet) pic.twitter.com/s6D1gONmpd

— NebraskanGooner📈 (@nebraskangooner) August 27, 2021

According to Cryptoslam, Axie Infinity and CryptoPunks have dominated NFT sales over the past 30 days generating $850 million and $500 million respectively. Art Blocks are the third most popular, with $438 million in sales over the past month.

Ethereum Price Retreating

The price of the underlying asset powering all of this network activity has actually retreated by 1.7% over the past 24 hours. Ethereum was trading at $3,108 at the time of press, according to CoinGecko.

The asset has gained 35% over the past month but remains 29% down from its all-time high of $4,357 on May 12.