Gas fees on the Ethereum network reached levels not seen since March 2023 as traders rushed to
capitalize on the early stages of the ERC-404 trend.
Ethereum network gas fees reached an eight-month high amid a frenzy of interest for a new,
unofficial experimental token standard dubbed ERC-404.
Ethereum network gas prices reached an average peak of 70 gwei ($60 for a standard transaction) on
Feb. 9, with peak gas costs surging as high as 377 gwei — a level not since May 12, 2023.
While the causes of the gas price surge can be attributed to various factors, the spike arrived when the
hype around the ERC-404 token standard began to pick up steam throughout the crypto sector.
The ERC-404 wave was kicked on Feb. 5 when a project called Pandora launched the experimental standard. It has since gained over 6,100% and had over $474 million in volume.
ERC-404 aims to bind ERC-721 nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to ERC-20 tokens,
allowing for what some have described as fractionalized NFTs, allowing multiple wallets to each own a
portion of a single NFT and use that portion to trade with or stake for loans.
Despite attaching the prefix “ERC” to the new breed of token, the name is very much unofficial.
Speaking to Cointelegraph on Feb. 9, one of the developers behind the Pandora project,
who goes by the pseudonym “ctrl,” said the team was working on “drastically reducing” gas costs.
“We’re trying to optimize for gas because that’s a big part of adoption and protocols wanting to integrate
[…] So in certain cases, we’re able to potentially reduce gas fees by like 300% to 400%.”
According to pseudonymous X user PopPunk, the co-founder of gas-auditing firm Gaslite, an ERC404
token uses approximately three times the amount of gas required for an average NFT transaction.
Much of this activity can be traced back to the significant trading volumes generated by Pandora,
DeFrogs and a roster of other ERC-404 projects that tout a combined trading volume of over $600
million in the last week, according to data from crypto aggregator Birdeye.
