Gas Fees.... OOof

TL;DR Over the last couple of weeks we have seen ETH gas fees go from ~40-45 Gwei to over 130 Gwei an astronomical increase in such a short time. I feel like I need to say this but I am not against meme tokens but when you account for such a large transaction volume it kinda is the result. One of the biggest causes of this is the meme token PEPE which has led me to wonder about the impact this has to encourage adoption with a higher barrier of entry now existing and the old critique of pricing out people who are only doing $50 to $100 transactions.

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After months of low transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain users have been hit with transaction costs not seen in over a year. This seems to have generated some unique reactions in my opinion. When Ethereum moved to Proof of Stake (PoS) it seems that some people still think this alone would drive down gas prices. I was surprised to see people still stuck on this idea since this was never the plan for Ethereum. When they first made the move and this rumor even started the developers quickly moved to squash it. Developers pointed to the environmental importance of the move given the political movements against crypto due to power consumption coupled with allowing more users to participate in securing the network.

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To address the gas fees issues faced other changes were implemented to try and help out the network. I honestly am not sure if they really fully worked to the state that we have given them credit for because crypto was and has been in a winter. Now that it is starting to wake up and move out of it we have seen gas fees go from 30 Gwei to over 140 Gwei a significant change, to say the least. What has led this charge is another meme coin run with PEPE exploding from next to nothing to having a market cap of almost $1.3 billion, larger than The Graph (GRT), the Sandbox (SAND), and even Curve (CRV)!

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While some people love these episodes and enjoy seeing people end up with windfalls of cash I tend to be much more hesitant about the pros of this. With how much the transaction fees have increased regular Ethereum blockchain users suffer the fallout. People who might have been participating in other ways like DeFi, NFT trading, or investing/utilizing other tokens on the blockchain bear the brunt of this. It also gives people on the outside who could be looking to onboard into crypto pause because the barrier to entry has increased so much. Others who have dogged and hated on crypto as well are given more ammunition to argue against the cause.

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Arguments can be made either way about the meme token craze and its impact. I am torn between the pros and cons since I love seeing people secure a nice bag odds are new and inexperienced people are the ones who are going to be left holding the bag when the PEPE craze fads as meme token crazes always do. If you made money on PEPE congrats that is amazing! Looking forward though it just seems like it might end up doing more harm than good to the overall crypto industry.