TL;DR Breakdown:
- The amount of Ether burned has exceeded $12 million within 24 hours of London hardfork activation.
- ETH burned should at least be greater than the newly issued coins to become deflationary.
More than $12 million worth of Ether (ETH) has been destroyed/burned since the long-awaited London hardfork was activated on the Ethereum blockchain on April 5. The changes to the network are fundamentally bullish, especially EIP-1559 which introduced Ether burning, and a “base fee” mechanism as a new fee structure for Ethereum.
However, it’s worth mentioning that EIP-1559 doesn’t make ETH deflationary as many assumed.
4,357 Ether burned since London upgrade
At the time of writing, about 4,357 ETH has been burned on the network, meaning over $12 million worth of Ether has been removed from circulation. The number of Ether burned increases as more is used on the network.
According to Ultrasound.money, COVIDPunks has the highest number of Ether burned, about 527.48 ETH since the London hardfork activation. This is followed by the 508.56 Ether burned by popular NFT marketplace, OpenSea, which recently reported massive network activity.
Other top burners include Uniswap V2 (339.84 ETH), Axie Infinity (250.66 ETH), Tether (195.35 ETH), Uniswap V3 (152.21 ETH), MetaMask (81.50 ETH), USD Coin (74.08 ETH), and others.
Is Ether now deflationary?
Following the successful activation of EIP-1559, many people assumed that Ether will become a deflationary coin as a result. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
An average of 1.96 ETH is burned every minute, according to data from Etherchain at the time of writing. In order for Ether to become deflationary, the number of Ether burned should be greater than the newly issued ETH. Ethereum miners are rewarded with at least 2 ETH per block.
Given the progress with London hardfork, many Ethereum users are optimistic about how Ethereum 2.0 will improve network performance.
From Zero to Web3 Pro: Your 90-Day Career Launch Plan
