Average bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees increased by nearly 200% in April compared to March, a report released by crypto research firm Diar on May 6.
The report also notes that bitcoin miners earned $13.7 million from fees alone — over 71% up from $3.9 million — the amount they made from fees during the previous month. The overall mining earnings in April were $291 million, up nearly 30% compared to March.
The on-chain transaction volume has reportedly risen 43% during April and resulted in full blocks, while Segregated Witness (SegWit) approached 40% of the total transactions per block and blocks regularly exceeded the one-megabyte block limit. For comparison, the average SegWit usage was 26% in 2018.
The number of on-chain bitcoin transactions reported in April approached the all-time-high of 11.2 million transactions reported in December 2017, 1-2 block confirmation times are 84% lower than seen at the peak, Diar writes. Moreover, the amount of BTC moved on-chain is still one third of the amount when compared to the all-time-high.
The fees would still increase substantially if the activity were to hit the same level, with the report stating:
“Diar estimates that at current SegWit usage levels, fees could go up as high as 300% should on-chain movement of Bitcoins resemble that seen in at the end of 2017.”
Lastly, the report claims that fees would be over 55% cheaper than in December 2018, since SegWit is working as intended. Bitcoin implemented SegWit in 2016 by the means of a soft fork.
The Diar report also noted that ether (ETH) transaction volumes on decentralized applications has registered a new high.
As Cointelegraph reported yesterday, bitcoin developer Pieter Wuille has unveiled two proposals on GitHub for a Taproot soft fork, with the aim to reveal less information after a bitcoin transaction takes place.