ETH Transaction fees for Ethereum (ETH) have surpassed Bitcoin (BTC) fees for two months straight.
ETH Transaction Fees “Beats” BTC in Transaction Costs
While neither blockchain is known for affordable transaction fees, the higher volume of Ethereum traffic due to catalysts such as the popularization of trading on Ethereum DEXes and the rise of DeFi has led to an exponential amount of traffic on the Ethereum network.
Ethereum fees have been higher than Bitcoin fees for 2 months straight. It's longest streak ever pic.twitter.com/2KgnNBcrrT
— Messari (@MessariCrypto) October 8, 2020
Ethereum transactions hit an all time high in August and have since cooled down. However, the volume of transactions on the Ethereum network is still high, signifying that DeFi still has a ways to go in terms of hype.
This has inspired much talk about scalability and how the Ethereum network can keep up with growing congestion.
Solving ETH Scalability
Some Ethereum developers are working on scaling specific solutions to target this issue.
Bitcoin scaling, on the other hand, seems to be at an impasse. A limitation in bitcoin’s transaction processing capability is the block size constraint in tandem with the proof-of-working complexity settings in the Bitcoin consensus protocol. This may contribute to elevated transaction charges and to delayed transaction processing that can not fit in a block.
Several ideas have been submitted about how to scale bitcoin, leading to many controversies. Bitcoin scaling drama has been omnipresent in the crypto community from inception and has resulted in multiple hard forks, including Bitcoin Cash.
As Ethereum becomes the most commonly used cryptocurrency, discussions on how to scale it may head towards a similar set of controversies.