Since the Ethereum Hard fork upgrade went live barely a month ago, the network has since burned the equivalent of 106,950 ETH. At the current market price of Ether, which stands at $3120, the Ethereum network has burned approximately $334 million, as of the time of this writing.
A hard fork occurs when there is a major alteration to the protocol of a blockchain network that results in a divergent split between the old protocol and the newer version. In a hard fork, miners must choose whether to continue validating the old blockchain or the new one.
The London hard fork was the latest upgrade and it incorporates five new Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), which are all temporary until the permanent Ethereum 2.0 update. One of the improvements is the EIP-1559 which is a proposal for the introduction of a ‘base fee’ that tracks gas fee prices across the entire Ethereum network in order to ensure accurate gas fee predictions for network users. It also gives the Ethereum network deflationary functionalities which give the network the ability to burn gas fees.
According to Ultrasound Money, an Ethereum network tracker, OpenSea, the popular Ethereum network NFT marketplace accounts for the most burns on the network which represents approximately 14.5% or 15,600 ETH, equivalent to approximately $49 million.
Asides from OpenSea, ETH transfers account for 9,170 ETH or approximately $29 million and Uniswap V2 accounts for 7,740 ETH or approximately $24 million. Both come in at second and third place respectively. The popular play-to-earn platform, Axie Infinity, takes the 5th spot, accounting for 5,210 ETH burned or approximately $16.3 million.
Bottomline
London hard fork is a vital step for the network, which is planning to move from a proof-of-work (PoW) network consensus to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network consensus with the aim of saving the network from near paralysis and reducing the amount of energy needed to execute transactions on the network, as the PoS is known to consume far less energy than the PoW.
