Ethereum Fees Hit All-Time Low as Layer-2 Scaling Enters Ultra-Low-Cost Era

High gas fees caused by congestion on the Ethereum mainnet have historically pushed transactions to Layer-2 networks such as Arbitrum, Base and Optimism. The Dencun upgrade, activated on March 13, 2024, introduced EIP-4844, allowing rollups to store data in low-cost blobs. While lower costs support wider adoption of payments and DeFi, they have also reduced ETH burns, challenging its established deflationary narrative.

As of early March 2026, data from YCharts, BitInfoCharts and Etherscan showed Ethereum’s average transaction fee had fallen to $0.09–$0.097. On March 15, Etherscan showed gas at about 0.045 Gwei, while a test token swap on Uniswap cost about $0.01. Network activity remained strong: daily transactions reached a record 2.5 million–2.9 million in January 2026, although protocol fee revenue totaled only about $11.8 million over the latest 30 days.