Tether Use on Tron Passes Ethereum as Low Fees Attract Small Transactions

The number of tether transactions on the Tron blockchain have passed Ethereum’s count for three consecutive weeks as fees on the number two blockchain remain high.

Total weekly tether (USDT, -0.11%) transactions on Ethereum have held steady at around 1.5 million for the past four weeks. But on Tron, transactions per week have grown from roughly 900,000 in mid December to nearly 2 million the second week in January, per Coin Metrics data.

This recent trend is “primarily because of fees,” said Coin Metrics analyst Nate Maddrey in a message to CoinDesk.

Priced in dollars, the average fee for an Ethereum transaction set a record high of above $19 a week ago, but now sits just below $8. Priced in ether (ETH, -6.11%), the average fee is well below all-time highs but still rather large, surpassing 0.015 ETH multiple times this month, per data from Blockchair.

“As fees go up, [tether] transactions tend to shift from Ethereum to Tron,” Maddrey said. Notably, the total value of tether transacted on Ethereum is still larger than Tron, signaling that primarily smaller transactors are migrating. Meanwhile, parties executing larger transactions who can presumably afford higher fees seem comfortable continuing to use Ethereum.

Tether Use on Tron Passes Ethereum as Low Fees Attract Small Transactions, Coindesk, Jan 21