Average Ethereum Fees in USD Hits New Highs; ETH Price & DeFi Tokens Launch into the Sky

It’s not just the price of Ether that hit a new all-time high at $1,700.

The cost of using the network has skyrocketed as well, with the average transaction fee making yet another peak at $20.63, as per Blockchair. In terms of ETH, it still has a way to go as it currently costs 0.0124 ETH, while the ATH was 0.032 ETH during the DeFi mania in Sept.

Average gas prices are also surging to 205.8 Gwei, aiming for Jan 4th high of 260 Gwei but nowhere near July 2020 levels of more than 700 Gwei.

In the December of 2016, it briefly went past 800 Gwei; however, up until the summer of 2020, gas prices went crazy high rarely, which has become a norm since the decentralized finance (DeFi) space exploded.

Given that popular DEX Uniswap is the gas guzzler, paying $34.5 million in gas fees in the last 30 days, it has also become unusable for smaller participants.

Uniswap is managing more than $1 billion in daily volume during the ongoing bull market, while competitor Sushiswap is doing half of it. Meanwhile, the biggest US exchange Coinbase only did just over 4x of Uniswap’s volume, which could see a $50-$100 billion valuation for its direct listing.

The high cost to interact with the Ethereum network is to be expected as not just the price of Ether, but DeFi tokens have also been enjoying the bullish onslaught.

In the past 24 hours, the biggest gainers include UMA (165%), SWRV (43%), AAVE (36%), WNXM (29%), BADGER (25%), COMP (20%), and SUSHI (13%).

This has pushed the market cap of DeFi coins past $60 billion, as per CoinGecko.

Total value locked in DeFi space has been hitting new highs every day lately, currently at almost $32.5 billion.