Ethereum Gas Fee Hits $48.33 (Avg.) in November

The gas prices associated with executing transactions on the Ethereum network continued to grow in November, reaching an average of $48.33, over 16x the cost of using bitcoin and far higher than the expenses associated with competing smart contract blockchains.

Bitcoin fees dipped below $3 for the third time in six months, while Cardano and XRP, two other smart contract blockchains, experienced average gas fees of only $0.38 and $0.32, respectively, as per CryptoCompare data. The research group asserts that the comparatively high cost of executing trades on the Ethereum network will have long-term consequences for the blockchain.

“[High gas prices] act as a significant impediment to the asset’s adoption growth in comparison to other crypto with lower expenses,” the business stated in its monthly report. The Solana blockchain’s meteoric ascent slowed significantly last month, with the Total Value Locked (TVL) in its network increasing 15.8 percent to $14.4 billion ($12.7 billion).

Whilst it is indeed an all-time record for the blockchain in terms of TVL, the rate of growth is far lower than the 111 percent average it achieved between July and October. Solana’s TVL is also far behind Ethereum’s, which climbed 8.60 percent to $178 billion in November, notwithstanding the network’s hefty transaction costs.

As per CryptoCompare, ETH was the best-performing cryptocurrency in November, yielding 7.9 percent over the month, trailed by solana, which returned 2.8 percent. All other top currencies had declines in November, with BTC, XRP, and ADA all losing -7.1 percent, -10.2 percent, and -21.0 percent, respectively. While the biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization have delivered great gains so far in 2021, with all digital coins gaining more over 95%, this has been coupled with high levels of realized volatility.

SOL’s realized volatility was 105 percent in November, while bitcoin’s reached 65 percent. In contrast, the S&P500 and NASDAQ indexes realized 15.6 percent and 19.4 percent volatility, respectively.