L1 Ethereum Network Fees Drop to Levels Not Seen in Over 2 Months, L2 Fees Follow

Ethereum network fees have dropped a great deal this week, sliding under $10 per transaction to levels not seen since March 10, 2022. On May 17, the average ethereum transfer fee is 0.0027 ether or $5.68 per transaction. The cheaper fees on layer one (L1) have made it so layer two (L2) fees have been between $0.02 and $1.13 per transfer.

Ethereum’s Onchain Fees Slide Lower Following a Brief Spike Last Week

This week is an optimal time to send ether or use the Ethereum network to swap coins as onchain transfer fees have dropped below the $10 mark. In fact, ether fees on average on May 17, 2022, are roughly around 0.0027 ether or $5.68 per transaction.

L1 fees on Ethereum have not been this low in 68 days, or since March 10. The lower fees follow a brief spike that took place during the Terra blockchain carnage on May 12, as fees were $31.19 per transfer on average that day.

With average network fees down this week, both median fees using L1 and L2 have dropped a great deal as well. At the time of writing on Tuesday morning (ET), the median network fee to transact on Ethereum is 0.0012 ether or $2.59 per transfer.

Median fees have dropped as low as $1.01, according to etherscan metrics on Tuesday. Etherscan data indicates that an Opensea sale could cost around $9.72 today, a decentralized exchange (dex) swap will cost $8.86, and transferring an ERC20 token will cost $2.60.

Ethereum’s L2 Fees Follow Drop in Onchain Transfer Costs

As usual, because onchain fees are cheaper, L2 fees have also seen a significant drop over the last five days since May 12. For instance, it costs roughly $0.02 per transfer using the Metis Network and roughly $0.10 to swap tokens.

While Metis is the cheapest L2, Loopring transfer fees are only $0.03 per ether transfer, and swapping tokens via Loopring will cost around $0.52. Zksync transfers are around $0.05 on Tuesday and swapping a coin will cost $0.13. The most expensive L2 today is Arbitrum One, as transfer fees are around $0.25 and a coin swap on Arbitrum is around $0.35.

The lower ether fees follow the network’s all-time hashrate high on May 13, 2022, at block 14,770,231. The network’s computational power hit 1.27 petahash per second (PH/s) that day, and continues to ride high.

Ethereum’s value has lost 41.8% year-to-date but ETH is still up over 482,570% since October 20, 2015, or roughly six years ago. ETH’s market valuation is 18.4% of the entire crypto economy’s net USD value, with a market capitalization of around $253 billion.

What do you think about Ethereum network fees sliding to new lows not seen in over two months? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.