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August has been one productive month for Ethereum (ETH) miners. In fact, miners’ profits soared to new heights demolishing the previous all-time high record established in 2018.
In August, Ethereum miners made a killing and earned an astounding $113 million in profits from transaction fees, according to Bitcoin.com. Based on data from the crypto analytics firm Glassnode, the amount is more than 3,660 percent higher than the $3 million miners made in April.
Last month’s $113 million is also the highest ever month profits earned by Ethereum miners. The previous record was made in January 2018 when miners collectively earned $64 million.
Ethereum fees have risen steeply in recent months. On average, it now costs around $6.57 to send a transaction on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain compared to the $0.09 it cost to send the same transaction in April.
As a result of high transaction fees, ETH miners broke is making record profits recently. For instance, miners earned over $500,000 in just one hour on September 1.
The explosive growth of the decentralized finance (Defi) industry, which ballooned to $9 billion in a matter of weeks, is the main driving force behind soaring transaction costs, according to analysts. Defi protocols such as Uniswap, Tether (USDT), Sushi Swap, and Yearn Finance (YFI) are among those with the highest network utilization.
Understandably, people in the ethereum community are getting concerned over the risings fees. One solution offered by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is for investors to layer two technology to get around the issue.
“To those replying with ‘gas fees are too high’, my answer to that is ‘well then more people should be accepting payments directly through zksync/loopring/OMG’,” he tweeted. “Seriously, scaling to 2500+ TPS for simple-payments applications is here, we just need to… use it.”
Ethereum miners have already surpassed Bitcoin miners in terms of profits. BTC miners only managed to rake in $39 million from transaction fees in Augusts, which is almost three times less than what Ethereum miners pocketed for the same period.
