Ethereum mining revenue holds up in August thanks to NFT craze

Ethereum’s mining revenue held up in August after the network’s EIP-1559 upgrade thanks to the craze into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and ETH’s price jump.

According to The Block’s Dashboard, the monthly Ethereum mining revenue figure for August is in the north of $1.65 billion, representing growth of more than 60% compared to that in July.

But the reality is more nuanced from an ETH-denominated perspective.

For starters, ETH’s price has been trending up over the past 30 days, hovering above $3,000 for most of the month, whereas the market was relatively bearish in July when ether’s price hovered around $2,000.

As of August 29, transaction fees that Ethereum miners have been able to collect as part of their revenues in the month was about 61,000 ETH – a sharp drop from over 91,000 ETH collected in July, according to data compiled by Etherscan.

The August number is where it is largely thanks to the growing level of on-chain activities on Ethereum amid the craze in NFTs, which generated significant volumes on NFT marketplaces.

The transaction fee drop in total ETH amount followed Ethereum’s EIP-1559 upgrade on August 5, which was activated to burn a portion of the network’s transaction fees that previously belonged to Ethereum miners.

The burnt amount crossed the 100,000 ETH level about 20 days after the network upgrade activation.

As of press time, more than 135,000 ETH in transaction fees have been burnt, worth over $420 million, which was more than the total transaction fees paid to Ethereum miners in July.