Ethereum’s dominance in fees remained unchallenged in 2024, with a total of almost $2.5 billion, more than double that of TRON.
When blockchain activity exploded last year, fees rose to $6.89 billion, according to a CoinGecko report. Ethereum (ETH) stayed far ahead of the competition, raking in a whopping $2.48 billion in gas fees.
TRON (TRX) wasn’t far behind, raking in $2.15 billion in fees, a huge jump from 2023. CoinGecko analysts point to TRON’s strong hold on the stablecoin market as the main driver, with monthly revenue rising steadily throughout the year. On average, Ethereum earned $6.79 million daily, while TRON followed with $5.89 million.
CoinGecko says the study examined blockchain fees from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2024, based on TokenTerminal and Artemis data, excluding blockchains with insufficient publicly available fee data.
Blockchain Networks Ranked by Fee Income | Source: CoinGecko
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Solana (SOL), popular for meme coins, also saw a huge increase in fee income. The network’s revenues rose a whopping 2,838% to $750.65 million. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC), with a 15.9% growth in fees, earned a total of $922.89 million. CoinGecko says the increase was driven by “increased activity in Ordinal NFTs, BRC-20 and Rune tokens, as well as rapidly growing interest in building on Bitcoin.”
In the layer 2 space, Coinbase’s network Base led the charge, earning $84.78 million in fees in 2024, up 548.2% from the previous year. While Ethereum still dominates fee revenue, other tiers like Arbitrum, Linea, and Optimism are making their mark with $44.10 million, $39.20 million, and $37.97 million, respectively.
CoinGecko says that fluctuations in layer 2 fee revenue “for now appear to primarily reflect on-chain activity driven by token airdrop and incentive marketing programs,” adding that “it remains to be seen how many fees layer 2 chains can earn in the long term.”
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