Ethereum network fees have dropped a great deal this week, sliding under $10 per transaction to levels not seen since March 10, 2022. On May 17, the average ethereum transfer fee is 0.0027 ether or $5.68 per transaction. The cheaper fees on layer one (L1) have made it so layer two (L2) fees have been between $0.02 and $1.13 per transfer.

Ethereum’s Onchain Fees Slide Lower Following a Brief Spike Last Week

This week is an optimal time to send ether or use the Ethereum network to swap coins as onchain transfer fees have dropped below the $10 mark. In fact, ether fees on average on May 17, 2022, are roughly around 0.0027 ether or $5.68 per transaction.

L1 fees on Ethereum have not been this low in 68 days, or since March 10. The lower fees follow a brief spike that took place during the Terra blockchain carnage on May 12, as fees were $31.19 per transfer on average that day.

With average network fees down this week, both median fees using L1 and L2 have dropped a great deal as well. At the time of writing on Tuesday morning (ET), the median network fee to transact on Ethereum is 0.0012 ether or $2.59 per transfer.

Median fees have dropped as low as $1.01, according to etherscan metrics on Tuesday. Etherscan data indicates that an Opensea sale could cost around $9.72 today, a decentralized exchange (dex) swap will cost $8.86, and transferring an ERC20 token will cost $2.60.

Ethereum’s L2 Fees Follow Drop in Onchain Transfer Costs

As usual, because onchain fees are cheaper, L2 fees have also seen a significant drop over the last five days since May 12. For instance, it costs roughly $0.02 per transfer using the Metis Network and roughly $0.10 to swap tokens.

While Metis is the cheapest L2, Loopring transfer fees are only $0.03 per ether transfer, and swapping tokens via Loopring will cost around $0.52. Zksync transfers are around $0.05 on Tuesday and swapping a coin will cost $0.13. The most expensive L2 today is Arbitrum One, as transfer fees are around $0.25 and a coin swap on Arbitrum is around $0.35.

The lower ether fees follow the network’s all-time hashrate high on May 13, 2022, at block 14,770,231. The network’s computational power hit 1.27 petahash per second (PH/s) that day, and continues to ride high.

Ethereum’s value has lost 41.8% year-to-date but ETH is still up over 482,570% since October 20, 2015, or roughly six years ago. ETH’s market valuation is 18.4% of the entire crypto economy’s net USD value, with a market capitalization of around $253 billion.