The number of transactions on the Ethereum network has fallen to record lows

The Ethereum network processed the lowest number of transactions for the entire current year, with just 490,000 transactions, according to Etherscan. The number of transactions dived during the 24-hour period, down more than 100,000 from 620,000 constant.

A possible culprit for such a sharp drop can be called unjustifiably soaring commissions. They suddenly rose in the short period from the thirtieth of June to the second of July, reaching almost one dollar on Monday. Although commission fees have now begun to decline, their peak occurred at a time when the network was operating at only half its capacity and this looks very suspicious and raises a number of questions.

Opinions are divided regarding the reasons for such strange price jumps. 

On June 2, a statement appeared about the relationship between the distribution of the GRAM token and the inflated commission. Over the course of a day, one of the GRAM wallets sends one token to different addresses on the network, thus conducting almost 6,000 transactions. This may have led to an increase in the commission, but not so significantly. A little later, there were reports of similar transactions from other wallets. To date, 17 tokens are already distributed in this way, these are DATx, OCN, LET, ARP, NC, AIT, IONC, TBCoin, LXT, Drink, BRM, HPC, GRAM, EES, 3DB, SGCC, ICC. 

It is unlikely that the projects of the listed tokens are related to this mailing. Most likely, the Ethereum network is dealing with a well-planned attack. However, so far there is no confirmation of this and no assumptions about who and why organized this spam.

Despite the fact that this is a temporary jump in the commission and its cost will soon return to normal, the events of these days once again drew attention to the issue of throughput, efficiency and vulnerability of the Ethereum network. The opinion about the inability of the network to handle excessive loads, as with the blockchain game CryptoKitties, and about the vulnerability of the network have already been repeatedly voiced in a negative way.