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The average transaction fee or gas fee on the Ethereum network dropped substantially in the first week of June after hitting a multi-month high in May due to the meme-coin frenzy and the multitude of MEV Bot activities.
The average Ethereum gas fee has dropped to $7.34, almost a third from last month’s high of $20. According to Dune Analytics, in terms of Gwei, the denomination of Ether (ETH), which is one billionth of one ETH, the daily median gas price has dropped to 24 gwei from a peak of nearly 140 gwei last month.
The meme-coin frenzy started at the end of April and took center stage in May, leading to many new meme-coins hitting the markets, such as Aped, Bobo, and a few others. Memcoin dominance in network activity was so high that it caused an unusual shift in the top 10 gas-burning altcoins. Instead of ETH, WETH or USDT, memecoins such as TROLL, APED and BOBO are spending in the top ten.
⛽️ A highly unusual shift in top 10 gas burning #altcoins has emerged today. Instead of $ETH, $WETHand $USDT being at the top of the fee distribution list, we’re seeing new assets like $TROLL, $APEDand $BOBO among them. Read our latest deep dive. https://t.co/7SlmJ59k2m pic.twitter.com/Y2kaLKZTrL
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) April 19, 2023
Another major reason for the increase in Ethereum gas fees was the growing popularity of these meme coins on decentralized platforms, as it took some time for the major centralized exchanges to list them.
May was not only associated with the hype around Etheruem meme-coins, in fact, the latest decision of the second layer of the Bitcoin network in the form of ordinals also gained significant popularity. Sequence numbers provide decentralized storage of digital art on the Bitcoin blockchain. As a result, many new meme coins were registered in the Bitcoin network, the market capitalization of the Pepe coin reached a billion dollars.
Related: Bitcoin Metrics to the Moon: ATH for Hash Rate, Daily Transactions and Sequence Numbers
Bitcoin Ordinals was introduced in January this year, and by the end of May, the number of Ordinal entries on the Bitcoin blockchain exceeded 10 million. The total amount paid to register Ordinals has grown by 700% in May and currently stands at 1639 BTC.
As the meme coin hype subsides, Ethereum gas fees have dropped and the number of inscriptions on ordinals has also dropped significantly.