Ethereum’s burn rate in October leads ETH to record the first 30 deflationary days in its history.
Following the completion of the “Merge”, on September 15, the total amount of ETH in circulation was 120,520,222 ETH; by early October, the amount had increased to 120,534,212 ETH.
From then on, the shutdown of ETH miners due to the transition to the proof of stake (PoS) mechanism brought about a drastic reduction in the issuance of new ETH.
To illustrate, if the blockchain had not moved to the PoS (proof of stake) model, the total ETH quantity would have approached 120,944,347 ETH.
The following graph from Ultrasound.money shows the amount of ETH after the Merger.
Since October 8, the overall supply has been decreasing as the burn rate has outpaced the issuance of new ETH, causing a decrease in the amount of ETH in circulation. As a result, over the past 30 days, 49,562 ETH have been “burned” at an average rate of 1.15 ETH per minute.
Total Ethereum supply appears to have peaked and is now just days away from falling below the amount in circulation at the time of the Merger.
3,318 ETH are being “burned” daily
Approximately 3,318 ETH are currently being burned on a daily basis, mostly by Uniswap, OpenSea and Tether.
The “burning” mechanism within Ethereum was introduced during EIP-1559, when the “base charge” was scheduled to be burned during each transaction. The amount of the base charge depends on market conditions and changes depending on network congestion.
The average base charge must remain above 15 Gwei for ETH to be deflationary. At the time of writing, the average charge is twice the required level, i.e. about 36 Gwei.
The annual “burn”
While Ethereum is on track to consolidate its deflationary status from current in-chain metrics, this does not mean that there will necessarily be a sharp drop in the amount of ETH traffic.
If the current trend continues, it is estimated by ultrasound.money that there will be 119,600,000 ETH by October 20, 2024, a drop of just 0.775% or 0.387% per year.
If the base fee increases, there could be a further decrease in the total quantity. However, from analyzing the available data, it is more likely that the total Ethereum supply will remain roughly constant for the foreseeable future.
A long-term projection chart on ultrasound.money shows that the quantity will not drop below 100 million until 2072.
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