The Influence Factors on Ethereum Transaction Fees

Abstract

In Ethereum blockchain, the user needs to set a Gas price to get a transaction processed and approved by Miners. To have the transaction executed, the Gas price has to be greater than or equal to the lowest Ethereum transaction fees. This paper presents a set of data sampled every 15 seconds, from 1 December 2018 to 15 December 2018, coming from different blockchain web APIs. The aim of the paper is to investigate whether and to what extent different variables - such as the number of pending transactions, the value of the USD/Ether pair, average electricity prices around the world, and the number of miners - influence the Ethereum transaction fees. This study is relevant from an economic perspective because more and more companies in different economic fields are adopting Ethereum blockchain. From historical data analysis, we found that only some of these variables do have an influence. For example, the number of pending transactions and the number of miners have a major influence on Ethereum transaction fees when compared to the other variables.