Fresh data reveals that amid the positive month that March has been for Ether’s recovery within the crypto market, Ethereum miners managed to rake in a total of $1.29 billion (roughly Rs. 9,740 crore) in revenue over the past month. While that’s still a long way down from the all-time high registered in November last year, it does bode well for miners who’ve suffered a rough few months over the winter period. Almost all of the $1.29 billion (roughly Rs. 9,740 crore) came from block subsidy, while less than $100 million (roughly Rs. 755 crore) were from transaction fees.
According to data from The Block, the total monthly revenue made by Ethereum miners increased by around 7.2 percent from February to March 2022. More importantly, this signifies a break in a descending trend that started all the way back in November 2021. At that point, the miners operating on the second-largest blockchain network made over $2 billion (roughly Rs. 15,100 crore) in revenue, but the numbers started to freefall in the following few months.
A large portion of the increase in miner revenue appears to be a consequence of EIP-1559 which came into effect with the London upgrade in August 2021 last year. The EIP-1559 upgrade brought on a major overhaul to the way transaction fee were estimated. EIP-1559 split the transaction fees, with the base fees now being destroyed while allowing miners to receive only tips.
Ethereum, for its part, is also in the process of making a move away from proof-of-work mining altogether, as it prepares for the ‘Merge’. Sometime in mid-2022, it will switch to a new proof-of-stake validation process. That said, this upgrade will not lower the transaction costs on the Ethereum chain for decentralised finance (DeFi), non-fungible token (NFT), and others, as it is only related to the consensus mechanism securing the network. The Merge does prepare the path for the future upgrade to sharding, which will lower gas fees.
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