Recently, the gas fees on the Ethereum network have been stupidly high. It got to the point that even Publish0x had to increase the minimum withdrawal amount to save some money on their payouts.

This has been going on for a while now, and it seems it won't stop any time soon.

The question is why? Why would the fees be so high? Even in March when it would have made more sense to have higher fees (prices halved, so miners would want to make more), the fees were still manageable.

Where did this sudden jump in fees come from?

Well, we need to fully understand how the network works.

For starters, someone sending 1ETH and for someone sending 1000ETH, the fee is the same. Therefore, you can theoretically pay a fee higher than the amount you're sending.

This is because the network fee is based on how congested the network is. If there are so many transactions to process, miners would prioritise the ones with the higher fees. This makes people want to pay higher fees to get their transactions noticed.

And recently, there has been a sudden interest in Uniswap shitcoins. Many people have made some serious bank buying new Uniswap listings(I 5xed my money on ALEPH), and since everyone is rushing to get those lower prices, they use higher gas fees. 

Equally, there are many Ponzi schemes running on the blockchain, such as "million money" and forsage. These scams require a lot of gas fees because of the amount of sending and receiving they do.

In fact, Million money was ranked above Uniswap in highest gas fees a few days ago.

These things out pressure on the Ethereum network, as they all hit it with their orders at the same time. So the miners decide which ones are the best by choosing the ones with the highest fees.

Is there a way to circumvent this?

I didn't find any real way, but I did notice that gas fees are very high during Asian sessions. So I mostly wait for the Asian market to go to sleep before carrying out my transactions.

I can't believe I have to schedule my sending and receiving in such a year, but this is the life we live now.

Thanks for reading