To celebrate the arrival of the FIFA World Cup, Flipside is holding a tournament to determine the top bounty hunters in the world across several blockchains, projects, and more. This is a gas tracking dashboard that looks at gas usage by a chain over the last 30 days across different blockchains. The chains analyzed are: Ethereum, Solana, Algorand, Flow, Optimism, Osmosis, Arbitrum and Near. The topics covered are divided in the following sections:

• Total Gas Spent
• Gas Spent vs Token Network Price
• Average Gas Spent per Transaction
• Average Cost of Gas in USD per $1,000,000 of Liquidity Transferred
• Block Gas Price
• Top 10 Wallets by Gas Spent

Ethereum

Ethereum is an open source decentralized software platform based on the Blockchain, which uses its own cryptocurrency, Ether. It allows Smart Contracts and distributed applications to be built and run without downtime, fraud, control, or third-party interference.

Ethereum abandoned Proof-of-Work (PoW) in mid-September 2022 and fully embraced Proof-of-Stake (PoS). With this system, there are no miners, but transaction validators who would "buy" their rights with a certain amount of ETH in their wallets. Thus, those who have more coins, the greater the chances they will have of being chosen by the system to validate transactions without any other expense of energy or equipment.

Total Gas Spent

Block Gas Price

Average Cost of Gas in USD per $1,000,000 of Liquidity Transferred

Top 10 Wallets by Gas Spent

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• Despite Ethereum being the blockchain with the least amount of blocks during the last 30 days, it is the chain with the highest gas price per block with 21.6 USD/block. However, the daily chart shows how Ethereum’s average price per block decreased over a 20% in a matter of days since November 5th.

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• Optimism is the chain with the largest number of blocks processed. This is highly correlated to the small price to pay on gas fees per block. This two factors are a clear example of why Optimism is a great Layer 2 solution to a Layer 1 like Ethereum.

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• On the other hand, Solana is second on number of blocks during the past 30 days, and still it is the second chain by fees paid per block. Nevertheless, the fees paid per block are 540 times smaller on Solana than on Ethereum.

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• All chains but Polygon have decreased in fees paid per block after the recent market crash (due to the FTX and Alameda news). The daily chart on Polygon went down slightly, but it kept going with its increasing tendency during the following days.

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• The hours (UTC time) when the gas fees per block are higher are:

  • Ethereum: 12 to 17h

  • Solana: 14 to 20h

  • Algorand: 11 to 16h

  • Flow: 5 to 16h

  • Optimism: 16 to 0h

  • Osmosis: 17 to 20h

  • Near: 10 a 21h

  • Polygon: 0 a 13h

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Thus, the hours not mentioned above are the best times to transact on each blockchain at the cheapest gas price.

• Ethereum is widely known for having very high gas fees. It is the chain where the fees paid are the largest amongst the 8 blockchains.

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• It can be seen already that the second chain with the highest fees spent per transaction is Near, and this amount is over 33 times smaller.

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• All the other blockchains get paid even smaller fees per transaction, with the smallest one being Flow.

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• The daily chart shows that the amount of fees paid per transaction on each chain has not oscillated much during the last 30 days.

Average Gas Spent per Transaction

Gas Spent vs Network Token Price

• Ethereum is the blockchain that its native token’s price is more correlated with the total gas fees spent.

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• Algorand’s, Near’s and Polygon’s total gas fees per day are also followed closely by their native tokens (ALGO, NEAR and MATIC, respectively).

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• Optimism and Osmosis seem to be consistent only over small periods of time. This means that the gas fees spent and their network tokens are sometimes very correlated for a couple days, and then they stop being correlated for the following days.

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• Solana has a fairly strong correlation as well, with the exception of the most volatile days where SOL pumps suddenly, and the amount of gas fees paid don’t seem to follow the trend that closely.

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• Flow’s gas fees spent correlation with FLOW’s price was very small during the first 15 days but recently it is seems to be more correlated, but with a small delay in time. This meaning that whatever FLOW’s price movement is, the gas fees spent on Flow follow a similar pattern but a day or two after.

Introduction

Solana

Solana is a PoS Layer 1 blockchain that offers many of the same operations as Ethereum, including decentralized finance applications (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Its native token is SOL.

Compared to Ethereum, Solana can claim that its software is easier to produce and use, plus everything is highly scalable, cheaper and faster compared to Ethereum.

Also, it works using something called Proof of History (PoH), as opposed to PoS. It uses a series of timestamps so everyone knows what's going on. That lack of time between computers translates into increased speed. Solana is built on a unique combination of PoH and PoS consensus mechanisms.

Algorand

This blockchain addresses the common issues of scalability and consensus mechanism of first and second generation blockchains. The main feature of Algorand is its Pure Proof of Stake (PPoS) consensus protocol which randomly selects validators weighted by their staked ALGO token (native currency of this blockchain).

Any user with minimal computing power, who owns $ALGO and is online will automatically be eligible to be elected to participate in the Algorand block consensus.

Flow

Conventional Blockchain application development used to be done on Ethereum, but technological progress and the increase in users has brought with it scalability issues. Flow was born as a new generation blockchain to solve these problems.

It has a unique architecture that allows it to scale without fragmentation in a secure, fast and simple way. In other words, its speed and performance are superior, and it also maintains a friendly environment for developers.

Flow operates with the PoS algorithm. Its network protocol is designed to scale thanks to a multifunctional architecture in which each node fulfills its own function. And with the novelty that, instead of implementing a horizontal flow, the Flow platform uses the so-called vertical flow. Its advantage is that it separates the objective (deterministic) processes from the subjective (non-deterministic) processes.

Near

NEAR Protocol is a public blockchain that facilitates the development of Decentralized Applications (DApps). Like other blockchains, such as Solana, Algorand, or Horizon, NEAR's goal is to compete with the Ethereum blockchain by offering greater scalability. The main advantage of this platform is its ease of use. The NEAR protocol offers a set of sample applications that make it easier to develop a DApp than on other blockchains.

One of the main features of Near is that it uses a sharding technique, known as Nightsade, to avoid slowing down the chain and achieve greater scalability. The objective of this fragmentation is to divide the Blockchain database into smaller sets to make them more manageable. Another advantage of NEAR is that thanks to the fragmentation, it does not need as much computational power. Even the nodes can work in the cloud.

Polygon

Polygon (MATIC) is a layer 2 solution with sharding support that seeks to facilitate mass adoption of blockchain projects through sidechains that offer 65,000 TPS and block confirmation times of two seconds. Polygon's technology moves Ethereum DApps to a system of connected blockchains (as in Polkadot) that retain the security and ecosystem advantages of the Ethereum network.

In addition to scalability, Polygon aims to enhance the developer experience with a permissionless design, full technological sovereignty, and modular security solutions. Regular users also benefit from low-cost and instant transactions, as well as full compatibility with Ethereum tools like Metamask.

Osmosis

Osmosis is a decentralized exchange (DEX) based on a next-generation Automated Market Maker (AMM).

Osmosis introduces a new Adaptive Automated Market Maker (AMM) model that operates within the Cosmos ecosystem. Appealing to both crypto traders and developers, the Osmosis crypto ecosystem offers a variety of use cases for its native Osmosis token and interoperable modular tools for developers.

Showcasing the potential for the next paradigm shift towards decentralized finance (DeFi), Cosmos AMM offers full customization with protocol parameters. Furthermore, the OSMO token allows liquidity providers to govern the individual pools in which they participate. In addition, Osmosis AMM offers frictionless and low-cost cross-chain transactions.

In simpler words, Osmosis is a decentralized exchange, in which we can exchange currencies from the networks to which it connects.

Optimism

Optimism is a Layer 2 blockchain that speeds up Ethereum transactions and reduces their costs by settling them on another blockchain using advanced data compression techniques.

The special sauce of Optimism's scaling methodology is in its name: it uses a technique called Optimistic Rollups, whereby multiple transactions are "bundled" into a single transaction, settled on another blockchain, with receipts fed back to the main blockchain of ethereum.

Optimistic Rollups are a type of rollup that "optimistically" assumes that all transactions in the rollup are valid. This saves time, as individual transactions do not have to be presented with direct proof of their validity. Rollup validators have one week to review the entire rollup if they believe it contains fraudulent data.

Overview

Based on the share of gas spent, the number of transactions and the share of successful transactions we can define the profile of the top 10 wallets by gas spent for each blockchain:

• Ethereum: 🥇Gas decentralization 🥈Variant Activity 🥉0 Arbitragers
• Solana: 🥇Gas decentralization 🥈Variant Activity 🥉4 Arbitragers
• Algorand: 🥇 Gas semi-decentralization 🥈Similar Activity 🥉0 Arbitragers
• Flow: 🥇 Gas centralization 🥈Similar Activity 🥉3 Arbitragers
• Optimism: 🥇Gas decentralization 🥈Variant Activity 🥉0 Arbitragers
• Osmosis: 🥇 Gas semi-decentralization 🥈Similar Activity 🥉2 Arbitragers
• Near: 🥇 Gas centralization 🥈Variant Activity 🥉1 Arbitrager
• Polygon: 🥇Gas decentralization 🥈Similar Activity 🥉0 Arbitragers

Thus, the blockchain with the most amount of arbitragers amongst the top 10 wallets by gas spent is Solana.

Conclusions

• Total Gas Spent
  • Ethereum is the chain where most gas fees were paid during the last 30 days with 4.7M USD.
  • Solana is the second blockchain were the most amount of gas fees were paid with 181k USD. Nevertheless, Ethereum’s gas fees paid are almost 26 times higher. Near follows with 59.9k USD, having 3 times less USD gas fees than Solana.
  • The daily tendency chart reveals that despite the difference in the total amount of fees paid across the 8 blockchains, all of them are fairly constant over time.
• Gas Spent vs Token Network Price
  • Ethereum is the blockchain that has its native token’s price more correlated with the total gas fees spent.
  • Algorand’s, Near’s and Polygon’s total gas fees per day are also followed closely by their native tokens (ALGO, NEAR and MATIC, respectively).
  • Optimism and Osmosis seem to be consistent only over small periods of time.
  • Solana has a fairly strong correlation as well, with the exception of the most volatile days where SOL pumps suddenly, and the amount of gas fees paid don’t seem to follow the trend that closely.
• Average Gas Spent per Transaction
  • Ethereum is widely known for having very high gas fees. It is the chain where the fees paid are the largest amongst all.
  • It can be seen already that the second chain with the highest fees spent per transaction is Near, and this amount is over 33 times smaller.
  • All the other blockchains get paid even smaller fees per transaction, with the smallest one being Flow.
• Average Cost of Gas in USD per $1,000,000 of Liquidity Transferred
  • Optimism is the blockchain where the average cost of gas in USD per $1M of Liquidity transferred during the last 30 days is the highest with 2.6k USD. This represents a 47.5% of the total. However, the daily chart shows that its trend has been very volatile over time.
  • Polygon follows with 1.6k USD, despite only being the fifth chain by total fees paid. Its tendency has been fairly stable, with the exception of the last week, where the FTX and Alameda situation crashed the whole crypto market and affected all chains.
  • Moreover, Ethereum is the third with 1.2k USD. However, Ethereum’s tendency during the past 30 days has been decreasing over time, with a high of 3.2k USD on October 22nd and a low of 653 USD on November 13th.
  • The next one is Solana, with a very small amount (4.95 USD) compared to the aforementioned blockchains.
• Block Gas Price
  • Despite Ethereum being the blockchain with the least amount of blocks during the last 30 days, it is the chain with the highest gas price per block with 21.6 USD/block. However, the daily chart shows how Ethereum’s average price per block decreased over a 20% in a matter of days since November 5th.
  • Optimism is the chain with the largest number of blocks processed. This is highly correlated to the small price to pay on gas fees per block. This two factors are a clear example of why Optimism is a great Layer 2 solution to a Layer 1 like Ethereum.
  • On the other hand, Solana is second on number of blocks during the past 30 days, and still it is the second chain by fees paid per block. Nevertheless, the fees paid per block are 540 times smaller on Solana than on Ethereum.
  • The hours on the afternoon (UTC time) are the best times to transact on most blockchains at the cheapest gas price.
• Top 10 Wallets by Gas Spent

  • Based on the share of gas spent, the number of transactions and the share of successful transactions we can define the profile of the top 10 wallets by gas spent for each blockchain:

    • Ethereum: 🥇Gas decentralization 🥈Variant Activity 🥉0 Arbitragers
    • Solana: 🥇Gas decentralization 🥈Variant Activity 🥉4 Arbitragers
    • Algorand: 🥇 Gas semi-decentralization 🥈Similar Activity 🥉0 Arbitragers
    • Flow: 🥇 Gas centralization 🥈Similar Activity 🥉3 Arbitragers
    • Optimism: 🥇Gas decentralization 🥈Variant Activity 🥉0 Arbitragers
    • Osmosis: 🥇 Gas semi-decentralization 🥈Similar Activity 🥉2 Arbitragers
    • Near: 🥇 Gas centralization 🥈Variant Activity 🥉1 Arbitrager
    • Polygon: 🥇Gas decentralization 🥈Similar Activity 🥉0 Arbitragers

    Thus, the blockchain with the most amount of arbitragers amongst the top 10 wallets by gas spent is Solana.

Methodology

When defining the profile of the top 10 wallets by gas spent for each chain these were classified into different categories according to the gas they spent compared to the other top 9 wallets, the number of transactions and the share of successful transactions. The thresholds used in this dashboard are the following:

• Share of gas spent:
  • Top wallet spent < 30% of top 10 wallets’ gas → Gas decentralization
  • Top wallet spent between 30 and 50% of top 10 wallets’ gas → Gas semi-decentralization
  • Top wallet spent > 50% of top 10 wallets’ gas → Gas Centralization
• Number of transactions:
  • Similar number amongst 6 out of the 10 wallets → Similar Activity
  • Not similar number amongst 6 out of the 10 wallets → Variant Activity
• Successful Transactions:
  • What causes all the failed transactions? The failed transactions are often caused by trading bots that take a brute-force approach to arbitrage. Thus, those wallets with <= 40% of successful transactions → Arbitragers

Gas Fees

One of the most controversial aspects in the crypto space are gas fees. There are many doubts that surround this concept, since depending on the network that we use, the gas fee can vary in price in a chilling way. Gas fees are the fees users pay to miners when a transaction takes place within a blockchain. This system works on a supply and demand mechanism. If there is a high demand for transactions, miners can include the highest paying transactions, forcing users to pay more so that their trades can be processed quickly and efficiently.

Ethereum network is known to have a very high price of gas, since it is one of the most used networks. The big problem with the Ethereum blockchain is that the blocks are full of transaction fees and they skyrocket when there is an increase in demand, either when the ETH price is high or when there are big spikes of users.

However, not everything is black, since there are other quite efficient networks where the gas rates are ridiculous, since they barely reach cents.

• Optimism is the blockchain where the average cost of gas in USD per $1M of Liquidity transferred during the last 30 days is the highest with 2.6k USD. This represents a 47.5% of the total. However, the daily chart shows that its trend has been very volatile over time.

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• Polygon follows with 1.6k USD, despite only being the fifth chain by total fees paid. Its tendency has been fairly stable, with the exception of the last week, where the FTX and Alameda situation crashed the whole crypto market and affected all chains.

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• Moreover, Ethereum is the third with 1.2k USD. However, Ethereum’s tendency during the past 30 days has been decreasing over time, with a high of 3.2k USD on October 22nd and a low of 653 USD on November 13th.

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• The next one is Solana, with a very small amount (4.95 USD) compared to the aforementioned blockchains.

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• Ethereum is the chain where most gas fees were paid during the last 30 days with 4.7M USD.

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• Solana is the second blockchain were the most amount of gas fees were paid with 181k USD. Nevertheless, Ethereum’s gas fees paid are almost 26 times higher. Near follows with 59.9k USD, having 3 times less USD gas fees than Solana.

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• Algorand and Polygon have a very similar amount of gas fees paid in USD.

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• The chain where the least fees were paid is Flow, with only 295 USD.

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• The daily tendency chart reveals that despite the difference in the total amount of fees paid across the 8 blockchains, all of them are fairly constant over time.

All transactions shown on the fact_transaction table are successful transactions.