Ethereum Gas Fees Hit Yearly High, Here is Why

Total fees on the Ethereum network have surged to a massive $46.1 million.

The Ethereum blockchain has hit another yearly high in total gas fees as the network witnesses a massive surge in demand and activity owing to Coinbase’s free open-edition NFTs and the second phase of Blur’s user loyalty incentives.

Data from blockchain analytics platform IntoTheBlock reveals that total gas fees on the network have skyrocketed to a whopping $46.1 million – a new one-year high. 

Ethereum hit another yearly high in fees, mostly thanks to the @blur_io incentives and #Coinbase's free NFT mint ?. This surge in fees indicates a rise in demand and activity on the network. #cryptocurrency #Ethereum $ETH $BLUR #Base pic.twitter.com/H8cAYKUuQq

— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) February 24, 2023

Coinbase’s NFTs

The American exchange Coinbase announced its Ethereum layer-2 network dubbed “Base” yesterday. The L2 solution was developed in partnership with Optimism.

To celebrate the launch, Coinbase unveiled “Base, Introduced,” an open-edition NFT collection for anyone with a wallet to mint free of charge. Nonetheless, there is a limit of one NFT for one wallet. Coinbase collaborated with Zora, an NFT minting resource, to enable users to mint the tokens.

These recently launched “Base, Introduced” Ethereum NFTs have been one of the primary drivers of the surge in Ethereum network activity.

Being a free open-edition NFT, numerous users jumped on the train before the Sunday deadline, with 104,690 tokens minted as of press time. This has triggered massive network activity. Per data from Etherscan, the Base NFT smart contract has attracted $702,374 worth of gas fees on Ethereum in the past 24 hours, making up 9.74% of the fees used within that time frame.

Blur’s Incentives

As previously noted, Blur’s second round of airdrops aimed at incentivizing loyal users has also been one of the major triggers of the surge in Ethereum gas fees. The prominent NFT marketplace revealed Tuesday that it plans to airdrop 300 million BLUR tokens (approximately $300M at the time) to its users in an elaborate loyalty program.

300M+ BLUR will be distributed to the community in Season 2.

What’s the secret to maximizing rewards? Loyalty.

Users with 100% loyalty have the highest chances of Mythical Care Packages, which are worth 100x Uncommon Care Packages.

Here are 3 ways to maximize your loyalty? pic.twitter.com/Cgiemrvpxh

— Blur (@blur_io) February 21, 2023

The latest program follows Blur’s previous airdrop last week amid the launch of its native token. According to Blur, users can maximize their rewards by listing on the marketplace and ensuring they don’t list elsewhere.

Blur’s recently-introduced incentives have driven massive traffic to the marketplace, contributing massively to gas fees on the Ethereum network. Etherscan ranks Blur smart contract as the top gas guzzler on Ethereum, raking in $59,511 worth of fees in the past 3 hours. Blur has contributed 9.30% of the fees on Ethereum in the last 3 hours.