Ethereum gas fees drop to lowest levels since August 2021

Gas fees for transactions on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain have dropped to the lowest levels since August. But they’re still not cheap.

According to data sourced from Coinmetrics and shared by CryptoRank Platform, the seven-day moving average cost of an Ethereum transaction as of March 9 totaled $11.14, placing it back amongst the levels recorded mid-last year before it surged dramatically to as high as $55 at the tail end of 2021.

The cost of transactions on the @Ethereum network has not been this low since Aug 2021. Notably, gas prices surged after staying in this range for about 3 months with experts attributing the spike to a rise in interest in the #NFT and #DeFi ecosystems.

https://t.co/oLDJyfSea2 pic.twitter.com/ieigvLT4Gz

— CryptoRank Platform (@CryptoRank_io) March 9, 2022

At the time of writing there appears to be minimal network congestion, with Etherscan data estimating gas fees to cost around 30 Gwei ($1.53) for a low-speed confirmation to 32 Gwei ($1.64) for a high-speed confirmation.

Ycharts data also shows that the average gas price of Ether has been dropping rapidly since the start of the year, plunging all the way from 218 Gwei on Jan.10 to 40.82 Gwei as on yesterday.

Amid booming growth of Ethereum’s nonfungible token (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) sectors in 2021, the network has come under fire on multiple occasions for its outrageously expensive gas fees.

Lower congestion and lower fees appear correlated with waning speculation or interest in NFTs and DeFi during the start of this year compared to late 2021.

Related: Does the future of DeFi still belong to the Ethereum blockchain?

In terms of the last 30 days, DappRadar data shows that nine out the 10 top marketplaces on Ethereum have seen decreased trading volume, with first-placed LooksRare and second-placed OpenSea both shedding 78.27% and 34.75% apiece. Other notable losses include SuperRare and Rarible with 73.29% and 80.65% each.

Ethereum-based DeFi too is also suffering too, with eight out of the top 10 projects in all-seeing red over the past month in terms of total value locked (TVL) and native asset token price.