ETH fees

Privacy-Centric Crypto Mixing Protocol Tornado.cash Plans to Deploy on L2 Platform Arbitrum

29/11/2021 by Idelto Editor

One of the largest cryptocurrency mixing protocols, Tornado.cash, has announced the project will deploy on the L2 (layer 2) Ethereum platform Arbitrum One. The creators of the Ethereum-based mixing application explain that settling on Arbitrum will allow Tornado.cash users to benefit from cheaper transactions.

Tornado.cash to Deploy on Arbitrum – ‘Cheaper Transactions Being the Biggest Comparative Advantage’

On November 29, the team behind the ethereum mixing application Tornado.cash revealed the project plans to deploy on the Arbitrum One network. The news follows the project’s recent collaborative efforts that applied network connections to Polygon, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, and Xdai. This week, total deposits for Tornado.cash on the Xdai chain crossed $1 million. In terms of ether deposited since the project’s inception, the protocol has taken in 2,222,007 ether, or $4.3 billion.

Essentially, Tornado.cash improves ether transfer privacy by breaking onchain links between the source and destination addresses. The protocol depends on zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) in order to ensure links to deposits and withdrawals are non-existent. Tornado.cash is just over two years old as it was introduced in August 2019. The project even got the former Bitcoin Core developer, Gavin Andresen, to notice the ether mixing protocol in mid-January 2020.

On May 13, Tornado.cash developers destroyed their private keys using a process called multi-party computation (MPC). The scheme allowed the Tornado.cash developers to give the smart contract to the community without the developer’s private key. “With a record 1114 contributions this was by far the largest Trusted Setup Ceremony to date. By comparison, all other trusted setup ceremonies had less than 200 participants,” the Tornado.cash team explained in the blog post.

Arbitrum is an L2 solution that leverages optimistic rollups and Arbitrum users benefit by using ethereum (ETH), its token derivatives, and smart contracts for a fraction of the cost. Statistics from l2fees.info show that the average ethereum transaction can cost $7.08 while using Arbitrum the same transfer would cost $2.81. While transferring ERC20 tokens could cost $16.19 using L1 (layer 1), L2 fees using Arbitrum to transfer a token will cost $3.09.

Swapping tokens is the most expensive onchain (L1) transaction costing around $35.41 per transaction. However, Arbitrum users swapping tokens only pay around $4.85 per transfer according to today’s l2fees.info metrics. The Tornado.cash blog post says that “the protocol’s smart contracts are all set and ready to spin on Arbitrum.” The biggest advantage to using Tornado.cash with Arbitrum is data transfer costs.

“Settling on Arbitrum will allow Tornado.cash users to take advantage of all the benefits a Layer 2 can offer, with cheaper transactions being the biggest comparative advantage,” the team’s blog post highlights. “This proposal is part of the protocol’s desire to constantly improve itself and allow more users to claim back their right to privacy. Moreover, with this deployment, Tornado.cash will join a thriving ecosystem composed of multiple other defi applications.”

What do you think about the crypto mixing application Tornado.cash deploying on Arbitrum? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Ethereum Has Burned More Than a Million ETH Over the Last 3 Months

24/11/2021 by Idelto Editor

111 days ago, the Ethereum network implemented the London hard fork upgrade which added a mechanism (EIP-1559) that changed Ethereum’s fee rate to a new scheme that makes the crypto asset ether deflationary. Since then 1 million ether has been burned or the equivalent of around $3.8 billion worth of ethereum using today’s exchange rates.

Over a Million Ether or $3.8 Billion Burned to Date

The second-largest crypto asset in terms of market capitalization, ethereum (ETH) has an overall valuation today just above $500 billion. Ethereum’s market capitalization represents 18.8% of the $2.7 trillion crypto economy. Three months ago, on August 5, 2021, the Ethereum blockchain upgraded and added various features to the consensus rules. The most transformative included EIP-1559 and EIP-3554, and EIP-1559 in particular created a new fee rate scheme that allows the network to burn a portion of ether.

EIP-1559’s summary hosted on Github states:

There is a base fee per gas in protocol, which can move up or down each block according to a formula which is a function of gas used in parent block and gas target (block gas limit divided by elasticity multiplier) of parent block. The algorithm results in the base fee per gas increasing when blocks are above the gas target, and decreasing when blocks are below the gas target. The base fee per gas is burned.

Since the new feature was introduced, metrics from Dune Analytics indicate 1,001,212 ether or $3.8 billion worth of ethereum using today’s exchange rates has been burned.

At the time of writing, etherscan.io’s API which shows the circulating ETH supply indicates that there’s 118,472,428 ether in existence today. The biggest ethereum burner today is still the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Opensea with 110,081 ether or $398 million burned to date.

The burning stemming from Opensea usage took place across 7,941,975 ethereum transfers. Regular ethereum transfers are tethered to 94,800 ETH burned since the upgrade in August. The decentralized exchange (dex) platform Uniswap V2 (version 2) is the third-largest ethereum burner since the upgrade. 92,239 ether or $373 million worth of ethereum using today’s exchange rates has been burned stemming from Uniswap V2 usage.

The stablecoins tether (USDT) and usd coin (USDC) also contribute to a lot of ethereum burning. While tether (USDT) is the fourth largest burner behind Uniswap V2, USDC is the seventh-largest ethereum burner today. Tether across 11,499,787 transfers has attributed to 53,988 ether burned or $210 million. USDC has contributed to the burning of 20,042 ether today or $77 million. Other applications like Metamask, 1inch, Sushiswap, and Axie Infinity also contribute to a lot of ether burning.

What do you think about the 1 million ether burned since August 5? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Ether Inferno: Ethereum Network Burned Over $2.4 Billion Worth of ETH in 87 Days

31/10/2021 by Idelto Editor

87 days ago, the Ethereum network successfully implemented the London hard fork upgrade, and ever since then over 700,000 ether has been burned, or more than $2.4 billion using today’s exchange rates.

702,886 Ethereum Burned Since the London Hard Fork

Data from Dune Analytics indicates that on October 31, 2021, otherwise known as Halloween, 702,886 ethereum (ETH) has been burned. The burning of ethereum started on August 5, 2021, when the Ethereum network successfully implemented the London hard fork upgrade and EIP-1559.

At the time, the London hard fork upgrade included roughly five different changes but the most transformative were EIP-1559 and EIP-3554. While EIP-3554 changed the Ethereum network’s difficulty bomb, EIP-1559 changed Ethereum’s fee rate to a new scheme that makes the crypto asset ether deflationary.

Just recently, Ethereum implemented the Altair upgrade which helps smooth the consensus process from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). After Altair was implemented, ethereum (ETH) tapped an all-time high (ATH) two days ago on October 29, reaching $4,467 per ether.

The 702,886 ethereum (ETH) that has been burned to date is worth roughly $2.476 billion using exchange rates on October 31.

The biggest ETH burner today is the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Opensea which has burned 91,171 ether. This is followed by typical ether transactions that everyday users and organizations send which amounts to 63,441 ether burned. The decentralized exchange (dex) Uniswap V2 has burned 51,217 ether, making it the third-largest burner today.

While tether (USDT) is the fourth-largest burner on the network on Sunday, the stablecoin USDC is the eighth-largest in the pack. Other notable platforms and networks that contribute significantly to the ether burn rate include Metamask, Axie Infinity, and the dex aggregator 1inch.

Meanwhile, statistics from bitinfocharts.com indicate the average transaction fee on the ETH network is 0.012 ether or $51.16. Metrics from l2fees.info are far more modest with Ethereum network fees recorded at $10.21 per transaction. L2fees.info also shows that transferring Ethereum-based tokens can cost $23.26 per transfer and swapping a token via a smart contract can cost $51.05 per transaction.

What do you think about the 700K ether or $2.4 billion worth of ethereum burned since August 5? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

While Ethereum Prices Skyrocket, Ether Gas Fees Surge Fueling Costly Transfers

30/10/2021 by Idelto Editor

On October 29, 2021, the second-largest crypto asset in terms of market valuation, ethereum, reached an all-time price high at $4,467 per unit. Meanwhile, after the Ethereum network’s Altair upgrade went live, ether gas fees have skyrocketed significantly.

As Ethereum Tests New Price Highs, the Average Ether Transfer Fees Onchain Skyrocket

The two leading crypto assets by market valuation have had issues with high transfer fees for many years now but this month, Ethereum’s network fees are significantly higher than bitcoin’s. On Saturday, October 30, bitcoin’s (BTC) average network fee according to bitinfocharts.com data shows BTC fees are around 0.00000015 BTC per byte or $3.15 per transaction.

The same web portal tracking ethereum (ETH) gas fees notes that to move some ether, it’ll cost around 0.012 ETH or $50.53 per transaction. The data shows that on Saturday morning, ETH fees are 1,504% higher than BTC network fees. Data stemming from the website l2fees.info are a bit more modest in comparison to bitinfocharts.com’s metrics. At the time of writing, to move ethereum it’ll cost $18.45 per transaction.

The cost to transfer Ethereum-based tokens and swap tokens via a smart contract is much higher. The transfer of token fee according to l2fees.info on Saturday is $43.13 per transaction and over $94 to swap tokens by interacting with a smart contract. The lowest ether transaction fee of $18.45 is still 485% higher than the average BTC transfer today.

Second-Layer Ether Transaction Costs and Swap Token Fee Estimates

Moving ethereum with a second-layer mechanism like Arbitrum or Polygon Hermez is much cheaper to use than onchain ETH transfers on the main network. At press time, Polygon Hermez-based ether transactions cost around $0.25 per transfer, while Loopring’s Zkrollup L2 solution is $0.74. Zksync will cost a user $1.03 per send and leveraging Arbitrum One is around $4.21. The EVM-compatible Optimistic Rollup chain Optimism’s fees today are $4.31 per transaction.

Using Loopring to swap tokens on Saturday is also cheaper than the $94 average cost using Ethereum’s mainnet. Loopring’s swap tokens cost is $1.07, Optimism’s fee to swap tokens is $5.54, and Arbitrum fees to swap tokens can cost $7.29 according to today’s metrics hosted on l2fees.info. As ETH has reached an all-time high, onchain fees are higher than usual following the Altair upgrade, which preps Ethereum for the next proof-of-stake (PoS) transition.

What do you think about Ethereum network fees rising in recent times? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Non-Custodial Dex Platforms Continue to Expand — Curve, Pancakeswap, Sushiswap, Uniswap Lead the Pack

26/10/2021 by Idelto Editor

Five years ago, there was a large quantity of digital currencies and blockchains, but there were very few trading platforms that dealt with decentralized exchange. Since the boom of decentralized finance (defi), there’s now a myriad of decentralized exchange (dex) platforms that allow people to swap funds in a private, non-custodial manner. These days the biggest dex applications are catering to a variety of blockchain networks via cross-chain technology.

Curve’s TVL Nears $20 Billion, Curve DAO Token Jumps 82%, Pancakeswap and Sushiswap Follow With TVLs Over $10 Billion

Defi has exploded in popularity during the last 12 months and there are numerous applications and platforms tending to the needs of traders and liquidity providers. Currently, there’s $245.1 billion in total value locked in defi platforms today across blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, and more.

Data from defillama.com indicates that the lending system Aave has the largest dominance metric today with 7.95% of the $245 billion, or $19.46 billion TVL. Aave is compatible with Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche and the TVL has increased 18.13% during the last seven days.

In terms of dex TVL rankings, Curve is the number one contender with $18.21 billion and compatibility with seven different blockchains. The Binance Smart Chain (BSC) dex application, Pancakeswap, has the second-largest TVL with $5.77 billion across only one chain.

The Curve dex cryptocurrency, otherwise known as curve DAO token (CRV), has increased in value 82.4% during the last week. Cake, the native currency for the Pancakeswap dex, is only up 0.7% this past week. Sushiswap is just below the BSC dex with a $5.6 billion total value locked across 13 unique blockchains. Sushiswap’s native asset, SUSHI, has gained 3.0% during the last seven days.

Uniswap, which leverages the Ethereum blockchain, has a TVL of around $5.26 billion, up 8% during the last week. UNI has gained 4.7% this past week and Uniswap version 3 is the sixth-largest dex in terms of total value held.

Uniswap’s Weekly Volume Close to $10 Billion, Dex Aggregators Capture 26% of Trades, Non-Ethereum Dex Platform TVLs Rise

Between Uniswap, Sushiswap, Curve, and 0x Native, the dex application Uniswap commands the most trade volume with $9.3 billion during the last seven days. Uniswap captures 68.2% of the volume across 14 different Ethereum-based dex platforms.

Meanwhile, Sushiswap has seen $2.2 billion in volume this week and Curve has seen $667 million. Dex aggregator platforms like 1inch and 0x API have around 26% of the trade volume. 1inch has seen $2.1 billion in weekly trades and 0x API $1.2 billion.

In terms of TVL, top dex applications from other blockchains besides BSC and ETH include Avalanche’s Trader Joe, Solana’s Saber, Raydium, and Serum, and Tron’s Justswap (JST) application. The Avalanche (AVAX)-based Trader Joe dex has increased its TVL by 33.11% this week and the Solana (SOL)-based Serum’s TVL jumped 20.74%.

What do you think about the dex volumes and total value locked in these defi applications? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.