Ethereum gas prices and whale activity have declined as the price fell below the $2,600 mark.
According to an X-post by CryptoQuant, the daily average gas price on the Ethereum (ETH) network fell to an all-time low of 2.9 Gwei, equivalent to about $0.026, on August 18. The average ETH gas price saw a slight increase and currently stands at 3 Gwei.
Data shows that only 115 ETH worth around $300,000 were burned when gas prices hit an ATL. ETH price consolidated around the $2,600 mark amid market-wide uncertainty.
One of the main reasons for the sharp drop in Ethereum gas prices is the Dencun upgrade that was introduced in March this year. Dencun allowed Layer 2 networks to run their data blobs on the Ethereum mainnet, resulting in a significant drop in fees.
However, the CryptoQuant analyst claims that falling network fees could potentially cause long-term problems such as “user and liquidity fragmentation.”
The analyst pointed out that the ETH supply increased by 197,000 tokens while the price fell by 35% despite the approval of the long-awaited ETH spot exchange-traded funds in the US.
In addition to fees, Ethereum whale activity has also declined. According to data from Santiment, the number of whale transactions involving at least $100,000 worth of ETH has steadily declined over the past week – from 5,371 on August 12 to 2,138 individual transactions at the time of reporting.
ETH is down 3% over the past 24 hours and is trading at $2,580 at the time of writing. However, daily trading volume increased by 32% and crossed the $10 billion mark.
