Ethereum ahead in fees revenue despite Bitcoin’s 198% fee rise

October 28, 2020
By Sam Grant

Bitcoin’s transaction fees have posted a massive surge that has seen the average fee go to double figures

According to data obtained from crypto aggregator platform Glassnode, transaction fees constitute 22.25% of Bitcoin miners’ income whereas the rest (77.75%) is made up of the block rewards.

This current share of fee revenues is so far the highest that has ever been posted since the plateau of the previous all-time high in late 2017 and early 2018. The fee revenues during this period climbed to a nearly 45% share.

Glassnode shared this observation on Twitter yesterday with a post reading, “The percentage of #Bitcoin miner revenue from fees increased to 22.25% in the past hour (24h MA). It is the highest observed value since January 2018.”

While this jump in the share of mining revenue represented by fee is significant in the Bitcoin platform, Bitcoin miners are still making less, in terms of fees, compared to Ethereum miners. This means Ethereum is still ahead and more profitable than Bitcoin in terms of fees raked in.

Ethereum had occupied the higher spot (relative to Bitcoin) in fees generated for over two months now. This was the longest streak ever posted by Ethereum. The record has been attributed to widespread adoption & use of stablecoins and the exponential growth of the decentralised finance sector which is largely based on the Ethereum network.

Messari, a crypto analytics firm, points out that Ethereum first outpaced Bitcoin on June 6. Ethereum’s fee revenue continued to remain higher than Bitcoin’s for over 4 months until October 22 with a brief exception between the end of July and the start of August.

Last week, Bitcoin temporarily took the higher spot but was dethroned once again by Ethereum on October 25. Ethereum’s fees have remained higher since then. There are still several discussions around the EIP-1559 fee reform proposal that aims to lower fees on the network. Miners are still opposed to the proposal even though the majority of Ethereum users have welcomed it.