The daily total network fees of the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain surpassed that of Bitcoin’s on June 6 and 7, an extremely rare occurrence for the network. This has been accompanied by heavy transaction activity, largely contributed to by Tether (USDT). 

Ethereum’s network fees totalled at roughly $502,000 and $546,000 on June 6 and 7, while Bitcoin’s amounted to roughly $310,00 and $252,000. Most in the cryptocommunity see this simply as a once in a blue moon event, not indicative of anything further.

However, it does signal that Ethereum is on the cusp of reaching a new level of adoption, as indicated by the numerous transactions causing an increase in fees, unique wallets and daily number of transactions - and of course the imminent arrival of Ethereum 2.0.

Tether accounts for most of the activity in the last few days. The total unique transactions for Tether over this period was 502,377 - which is tenfold greater than all other assets in the space. The same occurred in September 2019, with Ethereum again recording higher daily network fees than Bitcoin. Tether was generating a lot of transactions back then too, hitting a 187,912 daily transactions, which was a record for it at the time.

Stablecoins in general have taken up a lot of the network. Ethereum, meanwhile, has a lot of pending transactions, which could also explain the rise in transaction fees.