Ryan Watkins, a research analyst for Messari, has revealed the major catalysts behind the flip from both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
Strong trend instead of momentary spikes
As revealed by Mr. Watkins, typically, Ethereum (ETH) surpasses Bitcoin (BTC) in terms of total network fees in ‘momentary spikes’. The last time this occurred was during the painful crash in ICO euphoria in mid-2018.
But now it looks as though Ethereum's (ETH) advantage may hold for some time. This is the result of increased usage of the Ethereum (ETH) network as a settlement layer.
Mostly, this works perfectly with stablecoins. As covered by U.Today Crypto News, the ERC20-based USD Tether (USDT) stablecoin is one of the biggest parties using Ethereum (ETH) network resources.
Also, many Ponzi schemes that use Ethereum (ETH)-based stablecoins, like Paxos Standard (PAX), consume an insane amount of Ethereum (ETH) bandwidth and, therefore, cause high network fees.
Second-layer solutions may turn this around
However, the Messari expert foresees that the implementation of scalability solutions, primarily – a second-layer infrastructure – may unload the Ethereum (ETH) main chain. If this happens, network fees will plunge.
He remembered the migration of USDT (ERC20) transactions to Plasma sidechains by the OMG Network, which upgraded the performance of Bitfinex exchange.
With this upgrade, numerous Ethereum (ETH) transactions are processed in the same block. Plasma infrastructure allows processing some data off-chain to save the capacity of the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet.
Mr. Watkins outlined that this move will be of crucial importance and
could relieve pressure on the Ethereum blockchain and reduce fees.