Over a billion dollars has already gone up in flames
Currently, the stock of ETH is being reduced quite quickly thanks to the new base fee system. (Image: Cryptographer / Shutterstock)
Around 298,000 ethers have already been burned as part of the new transaction fee system in the Ethereum network since the beginning of August 2021. The cryptocurrency is therefore deflationary.
Since the implementation of EIP-1559 as part of the London upgrade of the Ethereum network and the crypto currency ether circulating on it, around 298,000 ethers have already been destroyed by the system of burning transaction fees. At a current rate of around 3,500 US dollars per ether, this corresponds to a total value of over a billion dollars over a period of six weeks.
In relation to the total period since London, it also shows that ethers are burned faster than new mined. The roughly 298,000 destroyed coins are compared to only around 257,000 newly mined. The stock of ether has thus decreased by around 41,000 ethers or around 143 million dollars in six weeks.
A closer look shows that this deflationary aspect has accelerated increasingly in recent weeks. In the past seven days alone, the inventory has decreased by around 17,000 ethers. In the hour leading up to this post, 351 ethers were burned and only 243 were re-mined.
Currently, an hourly equivalent of around $ 1.2 million is burned. Calculated down to the minute, this means a burn of around six ethers, the equivalent of over $ 20,000. That results from data from Watch the burn.
The statistics dashboard of Ultrasound.Money shows the NFT marketplace Opensea clearly at the forefront of the ether burners. In the 41 days since the London upgrade, Opensea alone has already burned around 42,000 ethers and thus around 147 million dollars. This can be explained relatively easily by the fact that an NFT purchase entails a whole bunch of transactions. The website Cryptoart.wtf shows this quite impressively.
Conventional ETH transfers follow in second place with around 26,000 ETH burned (around $ 91 million). Rank 3 and 4 deliver a neck-and-neck race. The defibrillator exchange Uniswap manages a burn of around 16,500 and the stablecoin Tether one of around 15,000 ethers. This is followed by the defi-game Axie Infinity with around 9,500 destroyed ethers.
Six weeks after the start of the new fee system, it turns out that it will not reduce transaction fees – as was initially hoped. This leaves only the positive effect of avoiding overpayments for transactions that were virtually preprogrammed by the previous fee auction system. The deflationary aspect should also help to keep the value of the ether at least stable.
