Ethereum miners’ hourly revenue has hit a five-year record, with fees currently bringing in 2,275 ETH ($880K) per hour. The spike was triggered by yesterday’s announcement that Uniswap would airdrop it’s governance token UNI to past users of the decentralized exchange. Following the UNI announcement, more than 70,000 users rushed to claim free tokens and the gas price surged past 700 Gwei. Crypto analytics firm Glassnode tweeted that fees had topped $1 million in an hour: Following UniswapProtocol's announcement of the $UNI token today, #Ethereum saw a massive surge in miner fees. Almost $1M USD in fees were spent in …

Dr. Elias Strehle of the Blockchain Research Lab and Lennar Ante of the University of Hamburg recently warned that blockchain nodes engaging in exclusive mining “have no incentive to forward new transactions to their peers.” They speculated that crypto miners may instead be incentivized to keep transactions confidential “in the hope of being the only one who can earn the associated transaction fees.” Exclusive mining, which is a type of collusion between a transaction initiator and a single miner or pool, uses private channels to confirm transactions rather than broadcasting them on the public blockchain. It is only after they …

An aggressive week of selling has seen the price Bitcoin (BTC) fall below $10,000 for the first time since late-July, triggering fear in the markets. After posting a local top of roughly $12,500 on August 17, BTC consolidated between $11,250 and $12,100. However, the last three days have seen sellers reject $12,000 and take over the market. Roughly four hours ago, Bitcoin briefly changed hands for $9,990 after seven weeks of price action above $10,000. BTC/USDT on Binance, 1-hour chart : TradingView Despite buyers quickly pushing prices back into five-figures, many traders are anticipating that prices will drop further to …

The surging popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols on Ethereum (ETH) has contributed to skyrocketing fees, with the network processing an all-time high of $6.87 million in total fees yesterday. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Synthetix (SNX) founder and CEO, Kain Warwick warned that high fees were impacting the growth of DeFi, stating: “In the last three months, we’ve gone from an environment where DeFi was expensive to use and a little bit slow, to now, [where] for a lot of people it’s prohibitively expensive.” Ethereum fees have spiked nearly 100% over the past 24 hours as congestion saw transaction expenses smash …

According to blockchain data platform Blockchair, the average transaction fees paid by Ethereum users have reached a new record average of over $7.50. Average Ethereum transaction fee in USD chart. Source: Blockchair During a similarly congested period from June - July 2020, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called for reform to the cryptocurrency’s fee system, suggesting fees this high could undermine the security of the network. According to Buterin, miners’ increasing reliance on transaction fees may incentivize selfish mining practices. This, in turn, could disrupt how transactions are processed. As a potential solution, Buterin suggests Ethereum improvement proposal 1599. This proposal …

According to information provided by the crypto Twitter account, Whale Alert, 92,857 BTC ($1,092,603,640) were sent from an unknown wallet for a fee just of $4 at current market rates. Although the Bitcoin network is well known for its generally low transaction fees, the cost-per-transaction has increased by over 500% in the last month. Bitcoin Block Bot, another whale alert-style Twitter account, reported on June 27 that a 101,857 BTC transaction had moved 0.5% of all Bitcoin currently in circulation, with a total transaction fee cost of around $0.48. Unknown information We do not know who sent these funds, nor …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has called for reform to the cryptocurrency’s fee system, warning that rising transaction fees could undermine the security of the network. The idea is based on a paper that suggests miners’ increasing reliance on transaction fees may incentivize selfish mining practices in a bid to extract greater profits, risking disruptions to how transactions are processed. Buterin’s comments come as users report Ether transaction fees tagging 100 gwei. Mythos Capital founder Ryan Adams tweeted earlier today that the Ethereum network must “find ways to fit more value in each block.” Buterin is advocating for the implementation …

F2Pool, a Chinese mining pool that recently mined an Ether (ETH) transaction with an abnormal transaction fee of 2,310 ETH, has returned 90% of the fee to its sender. Announcing the news on June 18, F2Pool said that the MiningPoolHub, the original owner of the address behind the transaction, has received back 2,079 ETH, or about $480,000. The mining pool specified the transaction ID showing that F2Pool has returned the amount to its original owner. In order to complete the reimbursement transaction, the original address holder had to sign the new address using the private key of the original address. …

A second transaction of 350 Ether (ETH) (worth $86,000 at press time) with an incredible $2.6 million gas fee has just been confirmed on the Ethereum blockchain, less than 24 hours after the first transaction for 0.55 ETH ($130 at press time) with an identical fee amount was processed. Both transactions were processed with a fee of exactly 10,668.73 ETH. Transaction details of the second unusual transaction. Source: Etherscan Unlikely laundering These mysterious transactions have stumped the wider community with some suggesting money laundering or revenge from a disgruntled exchange employee. Both transactions originate from the same address, but the …

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase settled a 2018 lawsuit recently, with a $2.5 total payout — the result of unclear fees charged when using credit cards for crypto purchases. A May 26 court document detailed: "The Court notes that Defendant JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., f/k/a Chase Bank USA, N.A. (“Chase” or “Defendant”) has agreed to provide a Cash Settlement Amount of an aggregate of $2,500,000 in cash." The lawsuit stemmed from lack of clarity In January 2018, JPMorgan Chase quietly altered the terms of use around its credit cards when dealing in crypto asset purchases, failing to alert customers until 10 …

With the block reward cut in half, miners are relying on Bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees to sustain themselves to a much greater extent. Miners lost 61% of their revenue May 10, miners earned 2188 BTC, May 12, this number fell to 852 BTC — a 61% drop. The halving of the block reward forced some miners off the chain, reducing the network hashrate. This in turn led to the increase in block interval, meaning that fewer block processed in a unit of time, decreasing the number of block rewards available to the miners. Miner Revenue and Revenue From Fees. Source: …

With the third Bitcoin rewards halving scheduled in approximately 14 hours at the time of press, the average value of transaction fees has surged more than 300%. According to data available on Bitinfocharts, the average transaction fees for Bitcoin (BTC) on May 8 peaked at $3.19, an increase of over 300% from the average fee on April 26, $0.62. The last time the average BTC transaction fee was over $3.00 was in July 2019. Source: Bitinfocharts Historically, Bitcoin transaction fees prior to a halving event have increased markedly. The last halving on July 9, 2016 saw transaction fees skyrocket in …