Gas fees on Ethereum’s Layer 1 blockchain dropped to just 0.067 Gwei on Sunday, despite a lull in cryptocurrency markets triggered by October’s historic market crash.

The average price for executing a swap on Ethereum is just $0.11, selling a non-fungible token (NFT) incurs a fee of $0.19, connecting a digital asset to another blockchain network will cost users $0.04, and an onchain loan costs $0.09 at the time of writing, according to Etherscan.

Transaction fees on the Ethereum network peaked at 15.9 Gwei on October 10, the day of a violent market crash that caused some altcoins to lose more than 90% of their value in 24 hours.

However, by October 12, fees had fallen again to just 0.5 Gwei and remained largely well below 1 Gwei throughout October and November.

Investors and traders can take advantage of low transaction fees to execute onchain transactions at the base layer. However, analysts and cryptocurrency industry executives warn that too low fees could spell problems for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Related: Ethereum fees hover around pennies as daily transactions top 1.6 million

Ethereum’s base layer has seen a loss of revenue since 2024

During the 2021 bull market, Ethereum’s Layer 1 transaction fees could cost users $150 or more during periods of network congestion.

However, after Ethereum’s Dencun update in March 2024, which lowered transaction fees for Layer 2 Ethereum scaling networks, fees dropped significantly, causing Ethereum’s revenue to decline by 99%.

Critics argue that low network fees are unsustainable for any blockchain network and pose both financial and security challenges due to the lack of revenue to incentivize validators or miners to process transactions and secure the blockchain.

Because fees respond to user demand, low fees and revenues can also signal that users are moving away from a particular blockchain network.

Ethereum, in particular, has chosen a scaling strategy that relies on an ecosystem of discrete Layer 2 networks, which is a double-edged sword, according to research by cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

While Layer 2 networks enable Ethereum to scale and compete with newer, high-throughput chains, Layer 2 networks also cannibalize Core Layer revenues, creating additional competition for Ethereum within its own ecosystem.

Warehouse: How Ethereum Treasury Companies Can Usher in ‘DeFi Summer 2.0’