Crypto: Ethereum fees drop over 85%

Using Ethereum costs much less than in the spring. The average cost of an ETH transfer has fallen to around $0.095, down from a high of $0.72 on April 21, according to Santiment data. The reduction therefore exceeds 85%. It arrives when demand on the mainnet has calmed down, but also after several months of technical improvements. Fusaka, blobs and Layer 2 have given more capacity to the crypto network.

Crypto: Transferring ETH now costs less than $0.10

The fall is clear. In April, sending ETH cost an average of $0.72 at the year’s high. This cost is now around $0.095. A simple transfer therefore falls below ten cents in the data monitored by Santiment.

Part of the explanation comes directly from the network. Ethereum activated Fusaka in December 2025. The update notably increased the capacity for rollups, raised the gas limit and introduced PeerDAS to better manage data.

The gas limit per block has been increased to 60 million. More operations can therefore be processed before users start fighting for the same space.

Demand also matters. It’s been a quieter summer on the Ethereum mainnet. Less competition to get into blocks generally means less pressure on fees. Santiment also warns that a cheaper network does not automatically mean that activity is picking up strongly.

For the crypto user, the result is much simpler: sending ETH, moving a stablecoin or using certain DeFi applications costs significantly less today than in April.

Layer 2s absorb a growing portion of traffic

Ethereum no longer handles all of its ecosystem activity alone. Base, Arbitrum, Optimism and other Layer 2s execute a large amount of transactions outside of the core layer and then publish their data to Ethereum. These networks use blobs in particular, which are less expensive than the old method of data storage.

At the beginning of September, Ethereum even reached a record of 6.7 blobs per block on a daily average. The detail is interesting: the network currently has a target of 14 blobs per block and a ceiling of 21. With 6.7 blobs used on average, there is still a significant margin.

Fusaka also strengthened this architecture. PeerDAS allows validators to verify fragments of data instead of having to download everything. For rollups, this opens up more space without requiring the same increase in bandwidth at each node.

It is quite a different development from the early years of Ethereum, when almost all crypto activity was directly fighting for a place on the mainnet. Transactions have been distributed. The costs too.

Very low fees don’t tell the whole story of Ethereum

For users, paying less remains good news. For network economics, the subject is a little less simple. Ethereum earns part of its revenue from fees paid on its core layer. When these fees drop sharply, users save money, but the protocol also collects less revenue.

The phenomenon was already visible in the first half of 2026. Ethereum recorded strong activity while seeing its revenue from fees decline. Layer 2s play an important role in this decline. They make the crypto ecosystem cheaper to use, but also move some of the activity away from the mainnet.

JPMorgan had already raised this question after Fusaka: more capacity and lower fees do not necessarily guarantee a sustainable increase in Ethereum revenue. The migration of certain applications and their users to Layer 2 may maintain this pressure.

The crypto ETH nevertheless rebounded this week after briefly falling near $2,350. She had collected more than $2,480 at the time of publication. The two movements therefore move forward together: ETH goes up, while using Ethereum costs much less. At $0.095 on average for an ETH transfer, the network no longer had much to do with periods when a few transactions could quickly cost several dollars.