Despite rising on-chain activity, transaction fees on the Ethereum network remain near their all-time lows — signaling a more mature and scalable infrastructure ready for complex, real-world use cases.
According to data from blockchain aggregator Milkroad, the average cost per transaction on Ethereum recently hovered around 0.16 gwei, or roughly $0.01. Token swaps were slightly higher at about $0.15, while NFT sales averaged around $0.27 per operation.
These minimal costs stand in stark contrast to previous cycles, when spikes in user activity often caused fees to soar — one of Ethereum’s most persistent pain points in earlier years.
Activity Rising, Fees Stay Flat
The number of daily transactions surged to 1.6 million on Tuesday, nearing a monthly high. Similar levels were last seen in early October, prior to the record $19 billion liquidation event.
The count of active addresses also climbed to a one-month peak of 695,872 on Saturday, according to analytics platform Nansen.
Upgrades Behind the Efficiency
Ethereum’s historically low fees come in the wake of the Dencun and Pectra upgrades — both designed to lower transaction costs and expand throughput.
The Pectra upgrade, rolled out in May, doubled the capacity of blob data objects in Layer-2 networks, effectively reducing L2 transaction fees by about 50%. It also enabled the migration of more activity away from the mainnet, further lowering base costs.
Meanwhile, the earlier Dencun upgrade, deployed on March 13, 2024, drastically improved Layer-2 efficiency. As a result, average Ethereum transaction fees dropped by 95% within a year of its release.
