Anyone who has used Ethereum in 2020 knows the frustration of paying for gas, the measure that represents a transaction’s computational weight. With gas prices sometimes rising up to 100 to 200 gwei, a unit equal to one billionth of an Ether (ETH), many users are finding themselves priced out of the action.
The easiest trick is simply avoiding making transactions during certain times of the day. New research from Flipside Crypto shows that the Ethereum blockchain shows quite specific patterns of congestion that a savvy user can exploit to pay less in gas.
The chart shows that, on average, the Ethereum blockchain is busiest from 1 PM UTC to about 6 PM UTC, corresponding approximately to the early U.S. trading session between 8 AM EST and 1 PM EST. This is likely no coincidence, as during this time window both Europe and the U.S. are fully awake and at work.
By contrast, the least busy period is between 9 PM UTC and 11 PM UTC. This also makes sense — The U.S. workday is coming to a close, Europe is getting ready to sleep, while in Asia it is still very early in the morning. In addition to lower average values, the evening UTC period also sees fewer outliers.
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