A trader has seemingly paid nearly $120,000 for a single transaction on the Ethereum ($ETH) network as gas fees surge and memecoin trading keeps on growing on decentralized exchanges on the network.
The Ethereum network is no stranger to high gas fees, but such instances have become increasingly rare since the shift from the proof-of-work (PoW) protocol to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.
According to available blockchain data, Ethereum’s average transaction fee was around $1.9 at the beginning of the year, and steadily rose to $4 by February. At the time of writing, the average transaction fee is at 0.012 ETH, or roughly $22.
The resurgence of high gas fees may be attributed to a surge in meme coin hype, which sparked intense network activity and clogged the system over the weekend. This hype saw trading volumes on decentralized exchanges surge, leading to heightened activity from Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bots.
An MEV bot, is made to maximize the amount of value that can be extracted from every block on the Ethereum network by influencing its content or order. These bots can, for example, take advantage of decentralized exchange arbitrage opportunities, or execute sandwich attacks.
A sandwich attack sees the bot execute two transactions around those of another user to manipulate the price of an asset that the user is trying to trade and make a profit off of the price difference.
Amid the trading frenzy, one traded has seemingly paid nearly $120,000 to get its transaction included in an Ethereum block, paying a total of 64 ETH in fees.
The transaction fee was paid as the trader was buying an altcoin called FOUR. The investor spent the 64 ETH to rush into the trade, acquiring 84 ETH worth of the cryptocurrency. In total, the trade made them a profit of over $580,000 as they caught the cryptocurrency right as it started trading.
Data from blockchain wallet management tool Zerion shows the trader rushed in with a buy, and later sold part its position for a profit over a set of transactions.
The trader’s wallet currently holds a number of little-known digital assets, as well as over 100 ETH that they are seemingly ready to deploy on newly minted cryptocurrencies in a bid to earn a profit.
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