Ethereum’s revenue falls by 44% as average gas fee drops 88% on quarter: Q1 report
Ethereum’s network revenue from gas fees totaled US$2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2022, down 44% from US$4.34 billion in Q4 2021, while 87% of the revenue, or around US$2.1 billion worth of ETH tokens, were burned, according to Bankless’ Q1 report of the blockchain.
See related article: Amount of Ether burnt since EIP 1559 reaches 1M ETH
Fast facts
Ethereum is the most widely used smart contract blockchain in the world and faced gas fee (transaction fee) surges due to the rising popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) in 2021.
In August, the Ethereum network implemented its EIP-1559 upgrade in the London hard fork, which replaced the previous auction-based transaction fee structure with a base fee, which now gets burnt, or destroyed.
The network’s average gas fee fell by more than 88% to US$2.98 in Q1 2022 from US$26.89 in Q4 2021.
Ethereum’s inflation rate, which tracks the change in the token’s supply, eased to 0.51% in the first quarter, from 1.10% in the first quarter of 2021.
The average daily addresses interacting with Ethereum increased by 4% in the first quarter on year, while the amount of staked Ethereum rose to 10.9 million ETH, a gain of 111% from 5.2 million ETH on year.
Spot market volumes on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on Ethereum rose to US$3.9 trillion for the quarter, up 667% from US$513.4 billion a year earlier, while perpetuals DEX volumes totaled US$209.1 billion, a jump of 2,704% on year.
NFT marketplace volume on Ethereum rose to US$116.4 billion during the first quarter, growing over 19,000% from US$606.3 million in the three-month period a year earlier.
See related article: Ethereum reaches 1 million NFT buyers as gas fees sink