Ethereum (ETH) gas fees jumped to a 10-month high — prompted by a surge in meme coin mania. Per Glassnode, the median Ethereum gas price over a seven-day moving average (7DMA) reached 43.641 gwei — a price last seen on June 30, 2022. Gwei is a denomination of ETH — with 1,000,000,000 gwei equaling 1 ETH, or 1 gwei equaling 0.000000001 ETH.

Over the past year, the median gas price over a 7DMA peaked at 150 gwei in May 2022 but dropped sharply by July 2022. It then gradually stabilized around the 20 gwei mark going into September 2022, when the Merge rolled out.

The cost of using Ethereum has been a point of contention since the “DeFi Summer” of 2020 — when the average gas price reached as high as 700 gwei. This period saw network activity surge as yield protocols, such as Curve, Compound, and Yearn, began taking off — triggering mania from the demand to farm unreal gains.

Ethereum’s architecture is such that high gas fees come about when network traffic and the demand for transaction verification is high.

(by Samuel Wan)