Ethereum's average and median transaction fee slip, lowest in six months

The infamous transaction fees of the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem underwent a decremental phase from Jan. 10 to record the lowest average and median fees of $14.17 and $5.67 — lowest since September 2021. 

Data from Blockchair shows that the average transaction fee of ETH in January was $53.03, which at its peak was $70.83 back in May 2021. Just within a month, the average fees saw an almost 73.3% decline as evidenced by the following chart.

Additionally, the resultant median transaction fee also witnessed an 81.02% drop from January’s $29.88. In the last six months, ETH’s median transaction fee was seen lowest in September at $6.26.

Interestingly enough, the transaction count of the Ethereum network has also come down to numbers that were last seen back in early 2019. Blockchair data show that on Feb. 1, Ethereum’s transaction count went down to 14,574,808 from 36,851,128 — a 60.44% drop in just one month.

This is the first time in Ethereum history that the transaction count saw such a huge drop within 30 days. In November 2021, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a new limit on the total transaction calldata in a block to decrease the overall transaction calldata gas cost over the ETH network.

Related: Individual ETH miner hits jackpot with $540K block reward

An ETH miner operating on 2Miners: Solo pool validated a block on their own and received a reward valued at about $540,000.

As Cointelegraph reported, the miner earned 168 ETH for successfully mining the block, which vastly outstrips the per-block average reward of about 4 ETH.