Pricey Ethereum Gas Fees Galvanizes Activity On EVM-Chains

Summary:

• Daily unique addresses on Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chains set a new all-time high of 6.77 million last week.
• Experts and on-chain say expensive gas fees pushed more users to leverage EVM-chain like BNB Chain, Polygon, Fantom, and Avalanche.
• The hike in gas fees coincides with the Pepe and meme coin fever spreading through the cryptocurrency market.

Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible network saw an uptick in user activity as Ethereum maintained its infamously high gas fees.

According to on-chain data from The Block, EVM chains set a new all-time high for daily unique addresses. The number of these unique addresses hit culminated last week on Wednesday, April 25. Daily unique addresses hit 6.77 million for the first time on EVM-compatible chains like BNB Chain, Polygon, and Fantom.

Ethereum’s network enjoyed an additional surge in interest after the Shanghai upgrade as traders and crypto users were once again spurred by meme coin mania. This increased trading activity on ETH’s chain caused a consistent rise in transaction costs, the main reason why users are opting for EVM-compatible chains instead.

Transaction costs on EVM-compatible chains like BNB Chain and Polygon are a fraction of gas fees on Ethereum. These networks are also able to provide cheaper gas fees while leveraging security infrastructure from Ethereum’s base layer.

Research analyst Kevin Pang noted a steady increase in transaction costs on ETH’s network since early 2023. Pang opined that this consistent rise powered growth in EVM chain usage. Data showed a 250% increase as gas fees jumped from around $2.5 per transaction late last year to $9 in May 2023.

Pepe Traders Contribute To Ethereum Gas Fee Spike

Speculative traders and memecoin mania are not new narratives in the crypto industry. Indeed, the rise in gas fees comes at a time when rising meme coin Pepe has stormed the market and grown in popularity.

The memecoin based on ‘Pepe the frog’ recorded over 2100% in returns for holders since its debut in April. Pepe’s PEPE-WETH contract has been the most active liquidity pool on Uniswap V2 and V3 for the past week. Pepe is also a top trending crypto on aggregators like Coingecko and CoinMarketCap.