Ether Network Fees - Traders Can't Afford It (2025)
May 19, 2021, was a day of plummeting in the digital currency market, and Ether (ETH) traders faced unbearable network fees during the “cryptocurrency crash.” However, by 2025, the Ethereum network underwent a tremendous transformation after the Dencun upgrade, reducing gas fees by 95%. The standard transaction cost is now only $0.39, a significant drop from the previous $86, while second-layer solutions like Arbitrum and zkSync handle transaction fees of less than $0.01. This fee revolution restored traders’ confidence during market volatility, with Ethereum-focused investment funds now attracting over $321.4 million in inflows weekly, with price targets between $4,000 and $6,000.
The latest developments in Ether network fees in 2025
The Ethereum network has undergone significant changes since the fee crisis in 2021. After the implementation of the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, the average gas fees were reduced by 95%, making transactions affordable for traders again. Current data shows that the standard transaction cost is now around $0.39, a substantial decrease from $86 before the upgrade.
| Transaction Type | Dencun pre-cost | Cost in 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Regular Transfer | 86 USD | 0.39 dollars |
| NFT sales | 145 USD | 0.65 USD |
| DeFi swap | 36 dollars | 0.42 USD |
Layer 2 solutions have further revolutionized the scalability landscape of Ethereum. Platforms like Arbitrum and zkSync now process transactions at a cost of less than $0.01, eliminating the high costs that traders faced during the market crash in 2021.
Institutional demand is accelerating, with Ethereum-focused investment funds attracting over $321.4 million in inflows each week. Technical analysis shows bullish signals, with price targets between $4,000 and $6,000, significantly outperforming other cryptocurrencies in the market.
The transformation of the network has restored traders’ confidence, allowing them to execute trades during market fluctuations without facing the high fees of previous cycles.
Ether network fees - The burden that traders cannot bear
May 19 was a day of plummeting in the cryptocurrency market, and for many users trading on Ethereum, the situation may have been worse than for other investors. In addition to facing losses from the devaluation of the coin itself, they also needed to pay network fees to carry out coin deposits and withdrawals on Ethereum. Moreover, on May 19, Ethereum’s network fees reached an all-time high, becoming an unbearable burden for many traders facing the “coin disaster.”
What are network fees?
Ethereum is not just a digital currency; it is a computational platform that supports smart contracts. On Ethereum, users can develop and build their own applications, such as decentralized exchanges, lending platforms, and oracles, among others. When users engage in activities within these smart applications, all actions need to be recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum developers do not provide transaction recording services; instead, they allow miners to perform the recording and charge users a miner fee. This miner fee, which is used to record one’s own transactions, is the network fee of Ethereum. For example, if a user conducts a coin-to-coin swap on the decentralized exchange Uniswap on Ethereum, they need to pay the network fee to Ethereum miners to record the transaction information.
The network fees charged for each operation on Ethereum can be calculated using the following formula: network fees = Gas price * Gas usage.
Gas is a measure of work in Ethereum, used to quantify the amount of work required by miners to complete a specific operation. For example, to record a transaction, a miner needs to expend 30 units of Gas. Gwei is the price unit of Gas, representing the compensation miners should receive for performing one unit of Gas work. The value of Gwei is tied to ETH, with 1 unit of Gwei equal to the value of 0.000000001 Ether.
How expensive can network fees be?
The pricing mechanism of Gas determines that the price of Gas is not fixed, but is adjusted according to the demand of Ethereum users. Before executing an operation, each user needs to pre-set the Gas price they are willing to pay for this operation. At the same time, the Ethereum system will receive many user operation orders, and the system will rank these orders in acute order according to the Gas price. Miners will prioritize processing the orders with the highest Gas prices. If a user wants their operation to be executed before others, they must increase the Gas price. The more people there are who want to execute operations quickly at the same time, the more intense the competition, and the higher the Gas price will be.
As the number of Ethereum users increases and each user pursues timeliness, the Gas price will rise. However, the computing power of Ethereum is limited. When users pay high Gas fees, it only allows miners to prioritize their transaction records but does not speed up the miners’ processing speed. Therefore, the more users there are on Ethereum and the more transactions that occur, each transaction becomes more expensive, and the entire network becomes slower.
At the same time, the pricing unit of Gas is Gwei, and Gwei fluctuates with ETH price increased as it rose. When ETH appreciates outside the currency market, the cost for users operating on Ethereum will also rise. According to statistics from Gas Now, on May 19 at 9 PM, during the massive collapse of digital currencies, the average Gas fee on Ethereum had already reached 1265 Gwei, based on the situation at that time. Ether price The price of each unit of Gas has reached $0.0034. This value may not seem large, but performing a token swap on Uniswap V2 consumes about 105,000 Gas, meaning that for each swap transaction, users pay an average of about $36 in network fees.
Despite experiencing the 519 crash, the price of Ethereum remains at a historically high level, and the network fees for operations on Ethereum are still higher than ever.
Warning 519
On May 19th, during the massive crash, the network fees on Ethereum also hit a new high. Users driven by panic rushed to trade coins on Ethereum. Many investors suffered greater losses due to delayed transactions. This may be the first time many investors have faced the costs associated with Ethereum congestion. The magnitude of these costs is likely to make more people aware of Ethereum’s limitations. The surge in Ethereum’s price after 2021 is closely related to the explosive growth of DeFi projects. After May 19th, investors’ attitudes towards the digital currency market may become more conservative in a short time, and the congestion and high network fees on Ethereum may become another collective memory, potentially changing investors’ attitudes towards Ethereum and even DeFi projects. After May 19th, the total locked value of DeFi projects on Ethereum decreased by 24.83%. After all, in a currency market where “black swan” events are as common as migratory birds, market risks can be forgiven, but technological risks may be unacceptable.
