What it measures
Fees paid on Ethereum — revenue backing the settlement-layer bet.
This gauge tracks the total fees users pay on Ethereum each day — the revenue of the settlement layer. Fees are demand made visible: every dollar is someone paying for Ethereum’s blockspace, security and finality.
How to read it
Ethereum’s fee picture carries a structural tension: layer-2 rollups deliberately move activity off the expensive base layer, so falling fees can mean either draining demand (bearish) or successful scaling (the roadmap working as intended). Read fees together with DeFi TVL and DEX volume: if fees fall while value locked and activity grow, scaling is doing its job; if everything falls together, demand is genuinely leaving.
Theses riding on this indicator
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Frequently asked questions
Why did Ethereum fees fall after 2021?
Two forces: bear-market demand decline, and the deliberate migration of activity to layer-2 rollups, which batch transactions and settle them cheaply on the base layer. The second is Ethereum’s scaling roadmap working — which is why falling fees alone are not a bearish signal.
Do Ethereum fees accrue to ETH holders?
Partly. Since EIP-1559, the base portion of every fee is burned, reducing ETH supply — high fee periods have made ETH net-deflationary. The remainder goes to validators as priority fees.
Where does this data come from?
From DeFiLlama’s fees dashboard, refreshed daily by the Moonkelp agent, shown with a downsampled multi-year history.
Data & method
Collected automatically by the Moonkelp agent, validated against plausibility bands before anything is written. How the pipeline works →
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This indicator is one tile of the daily briefing —read today’s full market picture →