Ethereum network fees paid to miners whenever a payment transaction is initiated on the blockchain more than ***** times between October 2020 and March 2021. These transaction fees - commonly denoted as gas or Gwei - were considered to be very low up to 2020, when the Ethereum network started to cope with increasing amounts as well as more complex transactions. This coincided with the growing importance of Decentralized Finance or DeFi, with more services essentially putting more strain on the cryptocurrency's network. The consequence is that Ethereum gas price increased for all users, especially for NFT transactions across various segments.

Ethereum's price history suggests that that crypto was worth significantly less in 2022 than during late 2021, although nowhere near the lowest price recorded. Much like Bitcoin (BTC), the price of ETH went up in 2021 but for different reasons altogether: Ethereum, for instance, hit the news when a digital art piece was sold as the world’s most expensive NFT for over 38,000 ETH - or 69.3 million U.S. dollars. Unlike Bitcoin - of which the price growth was fueled by the IPO of the U.S.’ biggest crypto trader Coinbase - the rally on Ethereum came from technological developments that caused much excitement among traders. First, the so-called “Berlin update” rolled out on the Ethereum network in April 2021, an update which would eventually lead to the Ethereum Merge in 2022 and reduced ETH gas prices - or reduced transaction fees. The collapse of FTX in late 2022, however, changed much for the cryptocurrency. As of May 4, 2025, Ethereum was worth 1,808.59 U.S. dollars - significantly less than the 4,400 U.S. dollars by the end of 2021. Ethereum’s future and the DeFi industry Price developments on Ethereum are difficult to predict, but cannot be seen without the world of DeFi - or Decentralized Finance. This industry used technology to remove intermediaries between parties in a financial transaction. One example includes crypto wallets such as Coinbase Wallet that grew in popularity recently, with other examples including smart contractor Uniswap, Maker (responsible for stablecoin DAI), moneylender Dharma and market protocol Compound. Ethereum’s future developments are tied with this industry: Unlike Bitcoin and Ripple, Ethereum is technically not a currency but an open-source software platform for blockchain applications - with Ether being the cryptocurrency that is used inside the Ethereum network. Essentially, Ethereum facilitates DeFi - meaning that if DeFi does well, so does Ethereum. NFTs: the most well-known application of Ethereum NFTs or non-fungible tokens grew nearly ten-fold between 2018 and 2020, as can be seen in the market cap of NFTs worldwide. These digital blockchain assets can essentially function as a unique code connected to a digital file, allowing to distinguish the original file from any potential copies. This application is especially prominent in crypto art, although there are other applications: gaming, sports and collectibles are other segments where NFT sales occur.

By March 2022, over 119 million Ethereum tokens were issued and in active circulation - but it is expected new coins will not arrive at a fast pace. Although the cryptocurrency has an unlimited supply - unlike Bitcoin, of which there can only be 21 million tokens and not a single more - the Ethereum blockchain received an update in August 2021, EIP-1559, that both increased the block size needed to create new coins and destroyed (“burned”) any transactions fees, rather than send them to the original miners. This led to a decline in issuance, as mining Ethereum essentially was made less profitable. Issuance is expected to decline further when Ethereum 2.0 arrives.

Ethereum: a counter to inflation?

In a time when inflation rates became a big talking point, Ethereum received much social media attention in late 2021 for possibly being deflationary. This argument stems from August 2021, or “London Hard Fork”, upgrade in August 2021: Each transaction on the Ethereum network would entirely remove a portion of Ethereum from the total supply in circulation. On days of high transaction activity of Ethereum, for example, after a change in the price of Ethereum, this can effectively mean more coins are being destroyed than there are being created.

Ethereum supply to change after the upgrade to 2.0?

Experts state burning on a scale that the supply of Ethereum declines only happens on occasion, stating it acts more as a temporary slowdown of growth rather than an active attempt to continuously shrink supply. This could change, however, when Ethereum 2.0 arrives – or when Ethereum switches from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). The general assumption for this is that staking rewards are generally lower than rewards for Proof-of-Work (mining), lowering the incentive for the creation of new coins. If usage – which some measure via the Ethereum gas price, or transaction fee per transaction – remains unchanged otherwise, this would lower the threshold for Ethereum to become deflationary.

The price of the native coin from BNB Chain (formerly BSC) grew by 50 percent in late 2021 but was much lower in 2022. On June 30, 2025, for example, a single BNB coin was worth more than 654.92 U.S. dollars - a value that is very different from the all-time high of 600 U.S. dollars in November 2021. Regardless, Binance Coin ranked in the top 10 most expensive cryptocurrencies in 2022. Noticeable is that the price increase of BNB in November 2021 coincides with a similar price change for Ethereum (ETH) - a cryptocurrency where BNB initially originated in 2017 before coming to its own years later. BNB’s history: From reward token in 2017 to an ecosystem after 2019 As the name suggests, Binance Coin or BNB originally started as an extension of the Binance.com trading platform - the most used cryptocurrency exchange in the world. It initially functioned on the Ethereum blockchain network as an ERC-20 token, offering incentives to owners like reduced trading fees, affiliate rewards, or a lottery ticket system (“Launchpad”) that let users invest in new, Binance-selected crypto projects. In 2019, however, BNB moved away from the Ethereum network and migrated to Binance’s self-developed blockchain: Binance Smart Chain or BSC (called BNB Chain since February 2022). Here, BNB started to support a chain that initially did not focus on hosting decentralized apps but focused on high transaction speed and being able to handle large amounts of traffic. DeFi and GameFi: the main segments for BNB BSC, however, made significant strides in 2021 partly due to traffic overload and high gas prices on Ethereum as well as the growing interest in both Decentralized Finance (DeFI) and NFTs. Much like Cardano, Solana, and Terra, Binance Smart Chain consequently became a valid alternative to Ethereum: The total value locked (TVL) of BNBs blockchain within DeFi, for example, ranked only behind that of Terra and Ethereum in early 2022. Another area where Binance’s blockchain and token play a significant role is that of GameFi - or “play-to-earn” blockchain games that are powered by cryptocurrencies. Some of the more well-known and most popular NFT games like Alien Worlds and Axie Infinity run on the blockchain behind BNB.