Chain-Specific Data

Algorand

Algorand actually doesn’t have a Gas fee concept. All transactions on Algorand have a basic minimum price of 0.001 ALGO.

But as the size of transaction goes higher (Transferring more funds or trading in high volumes, for example) the fee price goes higher.

Also users are able to chose paying more fee to prioritize their transaction.

Since most of transactions are regular ones, we can expect that fees on Algorand are in parallel with number of transactions on the network

Introduction

Hey Anon! thank you for showing interest in this analysis! For the beginning, let’s see what’s going on here, agree?

FlipsideCrypto has designed a bounty program inspired by the upcoming FIFA world cup 2022 in Qatar and sponsored by Algorand Foundation which is FIFA’s official partner. We are in the early stages. We are basically all teams around the world which want to show their competence and be present at the final stages of tournament. This analysis is our attempt to be successful in qualifying round. Only 32 participants will make it, so as I’m very nervous and determinant to be chosen, I want you to make sure to upvote my analysis if you found it interesting and valid.

To celebrate the arrival of the FIFA World Cup, we'll be holding a tournament to determine the top bounty hunters in the world across several blockchains, projects, and more. This year's theme is cross-chain comparisons. To qualify for this tournament, create a gas tracking dashboard that looks at gas usage by a chain over the last couple of months. Include Ethereum, Solana, Algorand, Flow, NEAR, Optimism and Osmosis, and add any other chain you think is worth noting.

Methodology

What are we looking for?

The structure of analysis is as follows:

At first we have some overall comparison between chains to have a better idea of ground we are walking. Then we’ll be discussing each blockchain’s specific stats to get a detailed understanding of their mechanism and performance.

The chains we’ll be covering:

Algorand -- Ethereum -- Optimism -- Osmosis -- Arbitrum -- Flow -- Solana

Basic concepts and exploring criterions:

• Total, Daily & Cumulative gas fee spend on each chain (in USD)
• Average cost of gas in USD per $1,000,000 of liquidity transferred on each chain
• Average block gas price hourly and daily
• The top 10 addresses on each chain that spend the most on gas in the past month
• Daily amount spent on gas by chain tracked over the last 30 days
• Chart gas spend to network token price

How are we doing this?

• I am using flipside crypto database and application to render this analysis

• Time period of this analysis is bounded to the past 30 days. From mid October to mid November.

• I used 3 tables from each chain database:

  Prices table to account for average daily price of gas tokens, Transactions table for total recorded successful transactions, and Transfers table to account for volume of payment or any other asset transfer of gas tokens

• Overall comparison charts are in Log scale since there was a significant difference in results and doing otherwise would lead to vague visualization.

• I would like to thank Ali3N#8546 author of this dashboard as I used its codes to double check viability of my analysis

• Average Required fee for transferring 1 Million worth of native token is an interesting criterion to explore. This criterion is mostly aiming the ability and propriate structures of a network to be used for inexpensive large payment transactions. Comparing to TradFi, Blockchain provides much cheaper fees for transferring money.

Total Comparisons

Flow

The thing that distinct Flow from other chain is their consensus and validating mechanism. Flow divides tasks of validating and recording transactions on to different nodes with different capabilities and is able to scale the network at a level which make lowest fees possible.

Flow Is also the cheapest network for transferring high volume capitals because of the level of scalability.

Notable Observations:

Since most of transactions are regular ones, we can expect that fees on Algorand are in parallel with number of transactions on the network.

At least in past month, there isn’t a clear dependency between ALGO price and Fees. We are in a bear market and engagement level is low.

Notable Observations:

Flow Is also the cheapest network for transferring high volume capitals because of the level of scalability.

There seems to be a dependency between Flow Price and Fees since they were both in a uptrend in past month.

Osmosis

Osmosis is an AMM based blockchain. It means that you are basically interacting with UI and tools of a DEX which has its own blockchain and is not relying or build upon other blockchains.

Validators of Osmosis set minimum gas for transactions to prevent network from spamming and reject transactions with fees lower than minimum.

Notable Observations:

OSMO price has a clear impact on collected fees, whether through increase in price or increase in engagement with chain (number of transactions)

Solana

Dooms days for Solana after FTX insolvency and fraud, leading to over 50% decrease in price and rumors of leading path to death.

We’ll have to wait and see how it unfolds, but we do know that Solana has one of the best TPS rates between blockchains with a basic 0.0025 SOL Fee that can change.

We also know that this is one of the reasons that Solana is always under DDOS attacks.

Notable Observations:

As the SOL Price went Down, Fees in Solana also decreased recently.

Ethereum

Even after merge Ethereum is not only the most expensive blockchain, but also keeping its previous gas prices.

This is not surprising since merge wasn’t a solution for gas fee prices (this was common misunderstanding that going from POW to POS will decrease Ethereum gas fees).

Notable Observations:

Top Ethereum wallets are more close comparing to other networks top wallets.

Increase in ETH price usually lead to increase in network engagement and higher Gwei. So as expected, there is clear dependency and impact in ETH price and Gas fee on Ethereum.

Optimism

Optimism is one of the most popular L2 scalability solutions of Ethereum. Lately, optimism attracted many users and TVL and the ecosystem hyped after the launch of OP token (Governance token) and their incentive programs.

L2 solutions of Ethereum are designed to keep the transaction fees low, while maintaining security of mother chain.

Notable Observations:

There is a clear dependency between ETH price and fees on Optimism as higher Gwei of mother chain has impact on fees on L2 chain.

Arbitrum

Arbitrum is another popular L2 solution of Ethereum which uses the same technology as Optimism for scaling Ethereum.

Arbitrum fees are also relevant to the price of ETH.

While Arbitrum seems to be a cheaper network to interact with (Specially after their recent update), it is more expensive for transferring funds.

Data & Analysis

Notable Observations:

As expected, Ethereum blockchain has the highest gas fee in every criterion at all levels.

Optimism as the second network with most total fees has ~70X lower fees than Ethereum.

Arbitrum & Optimism have close numbers since they both are using the same technology (Optimistic Roll-Up) to scale the Ethereum chain.

Flow has the lowest gas fee in every criterion at all levels.

What is Gas Fee?

have you ever though about how does the validating and recording of blockchain transactions and how does it?

Well, considering that this task is what all blockchains are essentially about, so someone (or some system in better words) is working to make this happen. Gas is the cost for the work of validating and recording transactions.

Usually, the initiator of transaction pays the gas fee, and all blockchains implement different mechanisms to keep the price of gas as low as possible to make it accessible and affordable for every regular users of blockchain.