Top Ethereum gas guzzler XEN Crypto is crunching ETH supply

Ethereum’s supply growth entered a deflationary state on Saturday, a first for the blockchain since The Merge upgrade that shifted the network to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in September.

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Fast facts

• Ether’s (ETH) burn rate has gone up along with gas fees (transaction fees) since Saturday behind the immense traffic brought on by a new cryptocurrency called XEN Crypto.

• XEN Crypto is an ERC-20, or an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency, which accounted for nearly 30% of the network’s transaction fees over the past day, according to Etherscan data.

• The cryptocurrency was created by ex-Google engineer Jack Levin and launched over the weekend, offering free minting for users willing to pay gas fees.

• Nearly 5,000 ETH in gas fees have been burned, or removed from the network, since Saturday, according to data from the Ethereum supply tracker, ultrasound.money.

• Ethereum’s price has not reflected the rising scarcity presented by its falling supply, and was trading at US1,290, down 1.85% in the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

• XEN was trading at US$0.01569 at the time of press after opening at US$0.0057 on Sunday, according to CoinMarketCap data.

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