Another year, another spike for Ethereum gas fees.
In many ways it’s a nice problem to have because high gas fees usually mean the price of ETH is rising hard. That’s certainly been the case over the past few months.
However, rising gas fees also means many transactions on the Ethereum blockchain are being priced out of the market.
But does that last statement actually make sense?
//Bill shock
Of course, in some ways it does.
As the price of ETH rises, it encourages trading behaviour - whether buying or selling. This increases congestion on the blockchain as capacity is limited, and that means users have to compete for scarce resources, which they do via price.
If you want to prioritize your transaction, then you need to be prepared to pay more to ensure your transaction is saved into a block in a timely manner.
//Units matter
Yet, in other ways, this issue feels much more psychological.
We want to perform an action on the Ethereum blockchain but when we see a gas fee that’s much higher than expected, we immediately recoil even though the value of our ETH-based tokens has also gone up.
Certainly - as in the fiat world - we might be asset-rich and cash-poor. But spending 0.01 ETH on gas is the same amount of ETH whether it’s worth $200 or $1,000.
In that context, would you really be happier paying a gas price of $2 than $10?
As is often the case, I think the issue we face is a question of mixing our perceptions of unit and value.
If we think primarily in terms of fiat currency, gas will always be an issue. If, however, you’ve reached the state of only numerating in native crypto, things become much less bothersome.
Personally, I’m not there yet although I did eat a 50% gas fee on a $40 Axie yesterday, so I am making some progress!