Note that it is now expensive to conduct transactions on the Etherium blockchain. Today, the cost of gas to conduct a quick transaction is estimated at 102 gwei. Accordingly, sending ETH would cost almost $4, while transferring ERC20 tokens like USDT would require the equivalent of $10 in ethers.

Selling NFTs on the OpenSea platform will cost $13, while exchanging them on the decentralised exchange Uniswap costs the equivalent of $34. The higher fees here are due to the complexity of interacting with the blockchain, which consumes more of its resources and costs proportionately more.

Sometimes, however, commissions can get absurd. That’s what happened the day before to one wealthy crypto investor.

How much do they charge to conduct a transaction in Etherium

At the time of the transaction, the trader paid the equivalent of $119,157 in commission. The commission was paid for exchanging 84 WETH – that is, a wrapped version of Ethers – for 13.76 billion FOUR on the decentralised exchange Uniswap.

According to Cointelegraph’s sources, such a large amount was not the result of a mistake or typo by the trader. He voluntarily increased the gas limit for the transaction in order to acquire the meme-coin more quickly.

The user may have mistakenly chosen such a high price for the gas before making the transaction. Still, he valued it at 418,859 gwei, whereas 200-300 gwei would definitely be enough to quickly exchange the cryptocurrency given the recent rates. Therefore, the trader really overpaid, and seriously overpaid.

However, as analysts point out, due to his actions, the anonymous trader was among the first to acquire the token, called Four, at all. A few hours after his transaction, the value of the meme-coin increased significantly, and as a result, the trader can already record a profit of 133 ETH.

That’s almost $250,000 at the current altcoin exchange rate. Accordingly, the investor has covered the cost of the transaction and even made an unrealized profit, which means that at least for now the strange transaction with the incredible commission was worth it.

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In recent weeks, amid the popularity of meme-coins, commissions on the Ethereum network have increased to a new annual high in dollar terms. Consequently, users need to shell out a hefty fee for any interaction with the network.

The second main reason for the surge in fees is due to the activity of MEV bots. This refers to special software that preempts particularly large transactions involving the sale or purchase of cryptoassets on decentralized exchanges. That is, if a user wants to buy a large volume of coins, which is sure to positively affect the value of the asset, the bot finds this transaction in the confirmation queue, purchases a similar coin, and executes the transaction earlier for a higher fee.

The user’s transaction is then confirmed, which affects the rate, well the MEV bot owners make almost instant profits. Read more about this practice in our material.

Unfortunately, memcoins in general create a bad situation for ordinary users of Etherium. Fees for simple transactions are going up, making the altcoin essentially unaffordable for most ordinary people. Still, not many people can afford to pay $10-15 for sending tokens and $50 for a single exchange on the decentralized exchange Uniswap.

While ordinary users of Etherium are losing money on commissions, employees of the Ethereum Foundation, which develops and promotes the blockchain, decided to make some extra money. The day before, its representatives transferred 15 thousand Ethers worth almost $30 million to Kraken cryptocurrency exchange. Apparently, the coins were sold, raising fears about the prospect of a market collapse due to the developers’ actions.

This is the sixth major round of altcoin sales by the organisation in recent years. The Ethereum Foundation last sold 20,000 ETH on 11 November 2021, when the asset traded at $4,677.

Of the aforementioned rounds, the sale of the coins did not result in a drop in its price on only two occasions – in December 2020 and March 2021. At that time, Etherium traded around $657 and $1,790 respectively, and 100,600 and 28,000 ETH were sold, which is significantly more than the current volume.

Not only did both cases did not lead to a collapse in the value of the altcoin, but they also occurred a few days before new waves of growth in its value. Accordingly, one should not expect a large-scale market collapse just because of the actions of Ethereum Foundation representatives.

At the same time, the balance of ETH on all exchanges by May 2023 has significantly decreased compared to January. In other words, on a global scale, another sale of Ethereum Foundation coins does not look that critical given the current market liquidity.


We believe that the current situation in the Ethereum blockchain is reaching the point of absurdity. Due to the network's limited technical capacity, the demand for transactions on it far exceeds the supply - that is, the ability to process transfers. With that in mind, simple coin transfers to Eth can cost more than people usually spend in a day. Naturally, this is not a normal situation, and there is no point in justifying what is happening. In this case, developers should put more effort into scaling the network and not put off the implementation of such solutions for several years. After all, hundreds of thousands of people want to use blockchain today, not someday.


What do you think about this? Share your opinion in our crypto-chat of experienced investors. There, first of all, we are shorting time in anticipation of the new bullrun, which probably won’t be much longer.