Ethereum Gas Fees Plunge to 0.067 Gwei, Sparking Debate Over Network Sustainability

• Ethereum’s layer-1 gas fees dropped to 0.067 gwei, making transactions extremely cheap.
• Basic onchain actions now cost $0.04–$0.19, depending on type.
• The low-fee environment follows the October market crash and ongoing slowdown.
• Analysts warn the decline may reflect reduced network demand and shrinking protocol revenue.
• Ethereum’s post-Dencun layer-2 scaling model may be diverting usage away from the base chain.

Gas fees on the Ethereum network have fallen to their lowest levels in recent memory, dropping to just 0.067 gwei on Sunday. The sharp decline comes after a slowdown in onchain activity that followed October’s dramatic market-wide downturn. For users, the immediate impact is clear: transacting on Ethereum has rarely been this cheap.

At these fee levels, swapping tokens on the base layer costs roughly $0.11, minting or trading NFTs costs around $0.19, bridging assets across chains is just a few cents, and borrowing in DeFi sits below $0.10. These costs are a far cry from the days of the 2021 bull market, when network congestion regularly pushed transaction fees into the double or even triple-digit range.

The sharp contrast highlights how much the landscape has changed. After gas prices briefly peaked at 15.9 gwei during the October 10 flash crash, fees rapidly fell back and have consistently hovered under 1 gwei throughout the past month. On the surface, the environment is favorable for traders, NFT participants, users testing new apps, and builders experimenting with new protocols.

But for the Ethereum network itself, the situation is more complicated. Transaction fees play a central role in Ethereum’s economic model, supporting both security and validator incentives. Extremely low base-layer fees mean the chain is generating far less revenue. Since the Dencun upgrade in 2024 — which pushed more activity toward layer-2 networks — Ethereum has seen its layer-1 revenue fall by up to 99%.

This shift reflects Ethereum’s long-term scaling strategy: rely on a hub of interconnected layer-2 networks to manage heavy traffic. However, this strategy also means the base chain risks losing economic gravity to the very networks it enables. If fewer transactions occur on the main chain, fee burns decline, validator incentives weaken, and Ethereum’s position as the “settlement layer” of Web3 comes into question.

Analysts caution that while low fees benefit users in the short term, they could signal deeper structural challenges — including diminished demand or weakening ecosystem stickiness. The question moving forward is whether Ethereum can maintain its central role while simultaneously empowering an expanding constellation of layer-2 ecosystems that increasingly compete for user attention and liquidity.

Final Thought

Today’s low gas fees reflect a calmer, cheaper, more accessible Ethereum — but they also highlight the inherent tension in the network’s scaling roadmap. If layer-2s become too efficient, Ethereum may need new economic models to preserve the security and value of its base layer.