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Starknet to hand 10% of network fees to devs, with $3.5M in first distribution

The Devonomics initiative from the Starknet Foundation aims to return a portion of network fees to incentivize developers.

Layer-2 network StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation are set to distribute a 10% cut of network fees to developers, a part of a pilot program called “Devonomics.” 

In an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on Dec. 12, StarkWare CEO Uri Kolodny said it was allocating a portion of the network fees, provisionally 8%, to decentralized app builders and 2% to infrastructure engineers and core developers through a transparent and open voting process.

“It’s all about giving the hands-on builders a strong voice in shaping the network,” explained Kolodny.

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Ethereum, Bitcoin users reignite scalability debate as gas fees surge

Ethereum gas fees reportedly breached the $200-mark for certain high-priority transactions in the last 24 hours.

A recent spike in transaction fees on Ethereum and Bitcoin appears to have reignited the debate around solutions for scalability and the role of layer 2s.

Over the last 24 hours, cryptocurrency users began sharing screenshots showing double, occasionally triple-digit transaction fees on Ethereum and Bitcoin.

One screenshot showed gas fees were as high as $220 for a high-priority transaction on Ethereum while other screenshots showed figures around the $100 mark.

Bitcoin users meanwhile, reported fees that were around $10 for high-priority transactions. While this is relatively low, the average Bitcoin (BTC) transaction cost has hovered around $1 over the last three months, according to BitInfoCharts. BTC fees haven’t been this high since May.

At the time of writing, a transaction from an Ethereum hot wallet comes with a network cost of $45.65 for a $300 transfer on decentralized exchange Uniswap, according to a test transaction conducted by Cointelegraph.

Network cost on Ethereum hot wallet Rabby Wallet. Source: Rabby Wallet

The rise in gas fees have prompted proponents of Solana and other blockchains to flaunt how much cheaper transactions are on those respective chains.

One X (formerly Twitter) user, “Bobby Apelrod” noted that Solana only charges $55-60 per minute for all Solana users, while each “poor Ethereum user” had to pay that much for a single transaction.

“Currently, #PulseChain gas fees are 4'000X cheaper than Ethereum and 14'000X cheaper than Bitcoin,” said “KaisaCrypto.”

The price of network fees is dynamic and is a product of demand or how congested the network is. An increase in on-chain activity often occurs in bull markets or when market sentiment is strong, but an added side effect is the impact on lower income users.

“How does this help the unbanked and lower income population,” Lopez iterated in a post which showed a “high priority” Bitcoin transaction fee of $10.50 on Nov. 9.

Prior to the fee spike, transaction costs on Ethereum averaged out at $11.35 on Nov. 8, according to BitInfoCharts. A few weeks earlier on Oct. 14 it fell as low as $1.40 — the lowest level recorded in 2023.

Gas fee on Ethereum peaked at $196 on May. 1, 2022, while fees were consistently above $20 between August 2021 and February 2022.

Gas fees on Ethereum over the last three years. Source: BitInfoCharts

Scale the base layer or rely on L2s?

Bitcoin and Ethereum developers chose to prioritize decentralization and security at the base layer and offload much of its execution environment to layer 2s to make transactions cheaper.

The Lightning Network is used to scale Bitcoin, while Ethereum has a handful of layer 2s specifically focused on making Ethereum faster and cheaper, such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon.

Transactions are often less than $1 on these layer 2 networks but not everyone agrees it is the right way to tackle scalability.

Related: Ethereum gas fees cool down after May memecoin frenzy

Justin Bons, founder of cryptocurrency investment firm Cyber Capital believes the base layer should be the only transaction environment.

He advocates for monolithic blockchain architectures in which consensus, data availability and the transaction execution is all handled on the base layer. Solana is an example of this.

Bitcoin and Ethereum on the other hand, are modular blockchains because they offload some transactions to a second layer.

However, critics have pointed to several outages on Solana due to network congestion, arguing that a modular blockchain design is a better approach to solve scalability.

Magazine: Binance’s exec exodus, Nasdaq to trade AI orders and SBF loses bail appeal: Hodler’s Digest, Sept. 3-9

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Ethereum Network Fees Surge 153% in 30 Days, While Arbitrum Daily Transactions Outpace ETH Following Shapella Upgrade

Ethereum Network Fees Surge 153% in 30 Days, While Arbitrum Daily Transactions Outpace ETH Following Shapella UpgradeEthereum network fees have experienced a significant upswing following the implementation of the Shapella upgrade on April 12th. In the last 30 days, onchain fees have soared by over 153%, from a prior rate of $4.65 per transfer to a current average of $11.80 per transaction. The data highlights a substantial surge in the costs […]

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Bitcoin’s Average and Median-Sized Network Fees Rose 40% Higher in March

Bitcoin’s Average and Median-Sized Network Fees Rose 40% Higher in MarchIn March 2023, Bitcoin’s average and median-sized fees jumped more than 40% higher after rising 122% in 10 days during the first week of February. The fees have followed the Ordinal inscription trend as more than 662,000 inscriptions reside on the Bitcoin blockchain, and 150 bitcoin worth $4.2 million have been added to fees. Bitcoin […]

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Bitcoin’s Blockchain Growth Accelerates With Trend of Ordinal Inscriptions

Bitcoin’s Blockchain Growth Accelerates With Trend of Ordinal InscriptionsThe Bitcoin blockchain has 40.49 gigabytes (GB) to go until it reaches half a terabyte (TB), and with the recent trend of Ordinal inscriptions, it’s likely to get there faster. The average block size reached a high of 2.52 megabytes (MB) on Feb. 12, 2023, but block sizes have subsided and dropped to an average […]

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Bitcoin’s Average Transfer Fees Experience Sharp Increase: 122% Rise in 10 Days

Bitcoin’s Average Transfer Fees Experience Sharp Increase: 122% Rise in 10 DaysStatistics show transfer fees on the Bitcoin network have increased 122% since the end of last month, as the average transaction fee has climbed from $0.767 to $1.704 per transaction. The rise in onchain fees coincides with the new Ordinals digital collectible trend on the network, with the number of inscriptions nearing 20,000. Rising Transaction […]

$62 Million Munchables Hack: Rogue Developer Returns All Funds, No Ransom Demanded

Ethereum Transfer Costs Continue to Slide — Network Fees Tap a 19-Month Low

Ethereum Transfer Costs Continue to Slide — Network Fees Tap a 19-Month LowOn Saturday, Ethereum transaction fees tapped a low not seen since November 2020 as the average network fee dropped to 0.0016 ether or $1.67 per transfer. Average fees on Saturday have been as low as 32 gwei or $0.69 per transfer as Ethereum gas fees have been steadily dropping since May 11, 2022. Ethereum Fees […]

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DeFi summer 3.0? Uniswap overtakes Ethereum on fees, DeFi outperforms

Fees spiked to a high of $8.36 million for Uniswap on June 15, beating out Ethereum on the same day at $7.99 million, and coincided with an 8.7% pump for UNI.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap has overtaken its host blockchain Ethereum in terms of fees paid over a seven-day rolling average.

The surge appears part of a recent spate of high demand for DeFi amid the current bear market. Decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms such as AAVE and Synthetix have seen surges in fees paid over the past seven days, while their native tokens, and others such as Compound (COMP) have also boomed in price too.

According to data from Crypto Fees, traders on Uniswap accounted for an average daily total of $4.87 million worth of fees between June 15 and June 21, overtaking the average fees from Ethereum users which accounted for $4.58 million.

Uniswap’s most advanced V3 protocol (based on the Ethereum mainnet) accounted for the lion's share of the total fees with $4.4 million, while the V2 variant also contributed a notable $336,556.

During this period, Ethereum’s total fees only outpaced Uniswap’s on two days out of the seven. In terms of a peak day of fees generated, Uniswap topped out at $8.36 million on June 15, beating out Ethereum on the same day at $7.99 million.

Top fees paid: Crypto Fees

Uniswap enables peer-to-peer (P2P) swaps of Ethereum-based tokens without having a central authority to facilitate trades. This is achieved by automated smart contracts. Under Uniswap’s fee structure, fees are paid by traders to liquidity providers who receive 100% of the fees on the DEX.

Related: Uniswap breaks $1T in volume — but has only been used by 3.9M addresses

Considering Ethereum is the blockchain home to the majority of DeFi, and is known for its expensive fee structure, a DEX such as Uniswap beating out the blockchain in fees over a week is notable.

According to data from CoinGecko, UNI has pumped 17.4% over the past seven days to sit at $5.18 at the time of writing. Recent acquisitions of the NFT marketplace aggregator Genie and the appointment of the former president of the New York Stock Exchange Stacey Cunningham as an advisor at Uniswap Labs may have contributed to this.

DeFi surge

Uniswap is not the only platform to see a surge in its fees and token price of late, as data is also showing strong investor demand for several DeFi platforms despite the current bear market.

Lending protocol AAVE and synthetic derivatives trading platform Synthetix in particular are ranked third and fifth in terms of average fees paid over the past seven days with $981,883 and $600,214 apiece.

Much like Uniswap, AAVE saw a surge of fees on June 15, as its total increased by 69% to $1.44 million. Its native token AAVE has also pumped 22% since then.

Sythentix’s rise has been the most notable. The platform saw a whopping 928% increase in fees paid between June 11 and June 13 as the figure rose to $843,297. The total fees then dropped to roughly $400,000 by June 17, before surging another 150% to roughly $1 million on June 19.

The boom can also be seen by observing Synthetix’s native asset SNX, the price of which has gained 105% since June 19 to sit at $3.08 at the time of writing. A key reason behind this appears to be the Synthetix Improvement Proposal 120 that went live last week that enables users to “atomically exchange assets without fee reclamation” therefore increasing the speed of trading.

Bucking this trend however, fees on lending platform Compound have been declining since April, and generated a mere seven day rolling average of $11,753 over the past week, though its native token COMP has increased 16.7% within that time frame to sit at $40.50.

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Apecoin Community Votes on Keeping APE Token in the Ethereum Ecosystem

Apecoin Community Votes on Keeping APE Token in the Ethereum EcosystemThe Apecoin community is in the midst of discussing whether or not the crypto asset should remain within the Ethereum ecosystem. While AIP-41 voting started today, the proposal’s voting process will end on June 8, 2022, at 9 p.m. (ET). Meanwhile, the project’s native token APE has lost 57% against the U.S. dollar in the […]

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