Top 20 crypto asset by market cap Tezos (XTZ) has successfully completed its latest upgrade, “Delphi,” which aims to reduce smart contract gas fees by 75% to attract decentralized finance developers to build on top of its blockchain. Delphi was proposed on Sept. 3. It’s a joint undertaking from Nomadic Labs, Metastatic, and Gabriel Algour intended to “help individuals developing smart contracts on Tezos.” According to a joint post from Delphi’s developers, the upgrade is “crucial to enable novel applications on Tezos that target areas like DeFi, collectibles, and gaming.” “The size and complexity of smart contracts is limited by …

The Bitcoin network mempool shrank to its smallest size since mid-October this week after the network’s hash power soared. The clear mempool meant that that thousands of stuck transactions pending confirmation were included in recent blocks, leaving very few unconfirmed transactions still outstanding. The spike in hash power has been attributed to the re-activation of China-based miners who migrated from Sichuan after the end of the province’s rainy season. Bitcoin’s hash rate increased by 42% over a two day period, Nov. 9 and 10. A smaller mempool is good news for regular Bitcoin users, as it reduces competition among fresh …

As the Bitcoin (BTC) price is reaching its highest levels since January 2018, Bitcoin mining is getting more profitable due to a number of factors. According to data from Blockchain.com, BTC miner revenue has soared to levels not seen since Bitcoin’s third halving in May 2020, which reduced the miner block reward from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. As such, BTC miners’ revenue hit $20.8 million on Nov. 4. According to Blockchain.com, this is the highest point recorded since September 2019, when the miners’ block reward was twice as much as now. A spike in BTC miner revenue levels is …

A clumsy trader claims to have “destroyed” his life after inadvertently paying $9,500 in fees for a $120 transaction on the decentralized exchange Uniswap. On Nov. 5, Reddit user u/ProudBitcoiner posted that he had accidentally paid 23.5172 Ether (ETH) for a single trade after getting the “Gas Limit” and “Gas Price” input boxes confused in the MetaMask wallet. “Metamask didn’t populate the ‘Gas Limit’ field with the correct amount in my previous transaction and that transaction failed, so I decided to change it manually in the next transaction, [...] but instead of typing 200,000 in ‘Gas Limit’ input field, I …

What factors contribute to transaction fee sizes? The two main factors affecting fees are the size of a transaction, and demand for block space. Given that some networks can only contain a limited amount of data in each block, miners or validators are restricted on the number of transactions they can include. When there are many users sending crypto funds simultaneously, demand for block space increases, and there are more transactions waiting for confirmation. Sometimes, demand for block space can get so high that networks experience congestion, and fees surge to unsustainable levels. Larger transactions require more space in the …

Bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees have nearly tripled in three days, from $3.52 to $10.20 on average. According to crypto market data aggregator Glassnode, 22.25% of Bitcoin miners’ income is currently made up of fees, with the other 77.75% coming from block rewards. The share of fee revenues is currently the highest it has been since the plateau of the last all-time high in January 2018 — which followed fee revenues spiking to almost a 45% share during the previous month. The percentage of #Bitcoin miner revenue from fees increased to 22.25% in the past hour (24h MA). It is the …

The controversial Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 would have burnt 970,000 Ether (ETH) — with a total value of $360 million — in the last year, if it had been implemented. EIP-1559 seeks to reduce transaction fees by introducing flat fees alongside a burn mechanism, The findings, based on Dune Analytics data and published by the Head of DTC Capital Spencer Noon, have raised questions among some in the wider Ethereum community as to why the proposal has not been implemented already. Twitter user ‘Laur Science’ suggested it should be implemented in the next hard fork, adding: “Hopefully, we don't …

The decentralized finance market seems to be deflating after the DeFi summer craze when tokenized versions of Bitcoin and protocols, such as Uniswap and SushiSwap, outperformed the rest of the market. Earlier in October, the two main DeFi indices, Binance’s DeFi Composite Index and TokenSet’s DeFi Pulse Index Set lost more than 60% and 50% of their value, respectively. Meanwhile, total value locked in DeFi projects has been inching closer to its all-time high of $11.2 billion since late September. DeFi Composite Index was launched by Binance Futures in late August, and it tracks the DeFi market performance using a …

Ethereum (ETH) transaction fees have exceeded those on the Bitcoin (BTC) network for two months straight. Crypto market data aggregator Messari tweeted about the streak on October 8, noting it is the longest period that Ethereum’s transaction fee revenue has exceeded Bitcoin’s in the crypto asset’s history. Ethereum fees have been higher than Bitcoin fees for 2 months straight. It's longest streak ever pic.twitter.com/2KgnNBcrrT — Messari (@MessariCrypto) October 8, 2020 Ethereum fees skyrocketed into new all-time highs during August as the decentralized finance (DeFi) bubble began to shift into high-gear. The smart contracts underpinning DeFi protocols typically require the execution …

Cumulative transaction fees paid to Ethereum (ETH) miners for 2020 are now close to double those of Bitcoin (BTC), clocking in at $276 million versus $146 million. A chart released by Coinmetrics highlights how Ethereum fees went on a steep ascent in the latter part of the year, coinciding quite closely with the release of Compound’s token incentive. Cumulative 2020 fees on Ethereum equalized with Bitcoin’s on Aug. 12, continuing a break-neck ascent since. This marks a distinct change from trends in transaction fees from past years, where Bitcoin generally dominated over any other network by a wide margin. In …

The majority of yield farmers do not understand how to read the potentially risky smart contracts that underpin the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem — but that hasn’t stopped them making huge profits. Crypto market data aggregator CoinGecko has published its findings from a survey of 1,347 of its users about yield farming, finding that 93% of respondents claim to have reaped a financial return of at least 500%. However around half of users are currently farming with less than $1,000, making high gas fees a significant concern in the community, even though three quarters were still willing to pay more …

Daily transactions on the Ethereum blockchain have just recorded a new all-time high amid the general surge of congestion on the network. On Sept. 17, the amount of daily transactions on the Ethereum network amounted to 1,406,000, according to data from major Ethereum browser Etherscan. This is the highest number of daily transactions ever recorded on the Ethereum network. According to Etherscan, the previous all-time high was on Jan. 4, 2018, reaching about 1,350,000 transactions on the day. The new historical high of daily Ethereum transactions comes amid the ongoing boom in decentralized finance, or DeFi, applications. The DeFi industry …