Guzzle, guzzle

Why are Ethereum gas prices so eye-wateringly high at the moment, well i could go into the nitty-gritty of it all, or i could gloat about the fee-less transactions and relative ease of use when using the steem blockchain for instance,

Btw - Gas refers to the fee required to successfully complete a transaction or execute a contract on the Ethereum blockchain

wtf

I you try to spend a small amount of Eth via something like Metamask, you get whacked with some ridiculous gas fee's, now i do understand that miner's need to get paid for their job of validating tokens and maintaining the network nodes etc, however, the one size fits all nature of things seems to discriminate against lower level users, here's an example:

Swap 0.0025 eth ~ $4.69 estimated gas fee $96.80 - $110.10

Swap 0.025 eth ~ $46.90 estimated gas fee $98.40 - $111.70

Now, i know it depends on the current gas (the average gas price was about 90% lower this time last year) price and that choosing a slower delivery method would reduce the fee, but only slightly, things cant go on this way, surely?

Conclusion

The latest updates to the Eth network might help a bit, known as Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), these might help until Eth2 is finally rolled out, its still going to be a very long wait.