Every fluctuation in the cryptocurrency market can trigger huge waves. From 08:30 to 10:15 (UTC+8) on September 1, Ethereum's network gas fees experienced a dramatic short-term spike. According to real-time monitoring by blockchain explorer Etherscan, gas fees peaked at 289 Gwei at 9:42, and as of 10:30 when this report was made, it remained at a high level of 126 Gwei, a surge of 162% compared to the baseline level of 48 Gwei earlier that day. This extreme volatility instantly focused the attention of global cryptocurrency investors and industry observers.
The direct trigger for this gas fee anomaly is the massive claiming wave following the controversial WLFI token launch. This token, which has gained traction due to its association with the Trump family, has sparked over 500,000 discussions on social platforms like Twitter and Telegram since its white paper was released in mid-August. Its project white paper states a total supply of 10 billion tokens, of which 25% is allocated to early investors through a "founder's lock-up plan" — 100,000 users who subscribed at 0.015 USD before August 15 and 30,000 users who added investment at 0.05 USD before August 20 can unlock 20% of their holdings (about 500 million tokens, or 5% of the total supply) starting from 0:00 on September 1 through an exclusive "Lockbox" smart contract.
Smart contract data shows that within the first hour after the unlock channel opened, 42,000 addresses initiated claiming transactions, with peak periods generating 12-15 related transactions per second, equivalent to three times the average transaction frequency of Ethereum. This centralized operation led to severe congestion in the network processing queue, similar to a highway suddenly experiencing ten times the usual traffic during morning rush hour, causing block packaging delays to extend from the normal 12 seconds to 47 seconds. An engineer from a cryptocurrency wallet service provider revealed on social media: "Our nodes processed over 700,000 pending transactions between 9:30 and 10:00, with 63% related to WLFI claims."
The gas fee mechanism of Ethereum has shown its market-regulating nature at this moment — users must bid for block space. Ms. Li, an early investor holding 100,000 WLFI, showed the reporter her transaction record: "To prioritize my unlock, I set a gas fee of 210 Gwei, and this transaction alone cost me 0.37 ETH (approximately 780 USD) in fees, which is 12% higher than my initial subscription cost of 0.015 USD." This extreme situation forced small holders to take a wait-and-see approach. Data from a certain DEX platform shows that only 17% of addresses with holdings below 10,000 completed the claiming operation.
Looking back at the history of Ethereum, similar scenarios are not uncommon. In May 2021, during the BAYC NFT sale, gas fees soared to 591 Gwei, and during the Blur airdrop in 2023, there was also a peak of 342 Gwei. However, the volatility caused by WLFI is more unique: even before its launch, it saw 120 million USD in trading volume on Binance Futures within 24 hours, a phenomenon of "pre-launch hype" that surprised the industry. Data from crypto analytics firm Nansen shows that 37% of addresses participating in the WLFI claim were previously active in the Trump-related digital collectible market, indicating a clear trend of community migration.
High gas fees are causing a chain reaction. The slippage rate for the ETH/USDC trading pair on the decentralized exchange Uniswap has risen from 0.3% to 1.8%, and the ETH staking volume on a certain lending platform, Aave, decreased by 2,300 within one hour. "We temporarily closed the small loan channel; when gas fees exceed 100 Gwei, transaction fees for loans under 500 USD will eat up more than 3% of the profit margin," said the platform's operations director over the phone. The quantitative trading firm Wintermute also revealed that it has suspended high-frequency arbitrage strategies on the ETH chain, as the gas cost for single-strategy transactions may exceed expected returns.
Market participants are closely monitoring the developments. Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko stated on social media that the client has activated an emergency optimization program to alleviate congestion by adjusting the block gas limit to 30 million (from the original limit of 25 million). Meanwhile, the performance of the WLFI token during the unlocking wave has also been a point of concern; after launching on the decentralized exchange PancakeSwap, its price surged from an opening of 0.08 USD to 0.14 USD, then fell back to 0.09 USD, with a fluctuation of 75%.
Messari analyst Wang Yu pointed out: "This incident exposes the vulnerability of public chains under sudden traffic. Although Ethereum's PoS mechanism after the merge has enhanced security, the bottleneck in processing efficiency has not been completely resolved." He also reminded investors that tokens like WLFI, which have strong narrative attributes, may maintain a premium in the short term due to community enthusiasm, but their long-term value still needs to be observed based on their ecological implementation.
As of the time of reporting, there are still 387,000 pending transactions on the Ethereum network. Whether gas fees can fall below 80 Gwei within 24 hours and whether the WLFI token can maintain the 0.1 USD mark will become key observation points for the upcoming market trends. In this uncertain market, every data fluctuation could be a prelude to the next storm.
