‘Stop crying about it’: Exorbitant ETH gas fees are just another stress test

ETH gas prices went up to 77 gwei yesterday as users rushed to mint a seemingly useless token

article-image

Art Rachen/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Ethereum gas prices spiked up to 77 gwei yesterday as users rushed to mint VMPX tokens, a project launched via XEN.

XEN is an ERC-20 — the standard for smart contract tokens on Ethereum — and is created through “proof of participation” where users must connect their wallet and express how long they are willing to wait to receive the token.

The value of XEN — or any other token that uses its smart contract to launch — is correlated to the number of people who want that specific token, as described in XEN’s white paper.

Users do not need to lock in any assets to mint the token and simply need to pay the transaction fee. Essentially, these tokens are designed to maximize block space and increase gas prices. They do not appear to have inherent value unless there is demand. 

Loading Tweet..

One particular user paid up to 1.3 ETH (almost $2,500) in gas fees to mint the VMPX token. It is unclear how much profit, if any, the user made from selling the token.

Pseudonymous twitter user zilbaghodler noted that “they are selling straight into the LP [liquidity pool] and making around $40 per $2300 they spend.”

This type of behavior significantly drives up gas prices for regular traders and can hinder mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.

“There is no trivial way to stop this,” software engineer and cryptocurrency trader Eric Wall tweeted in May. “The way you limit ‘bloat’ is by setting block size / gas limits at the consensus level.”

Although it is an uncommon case, Wall notes that these type of challenges will continue to arise as Ethereum scales

“They push us to make sure we have [layer-2] solutions in place and wallet infrastructure that can accommodate it,” Wall wrote. “It’s a stress test. It’s good and you should stop crying about it.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research

article-image

A 40% allocation to crypto today is safer than a 1% allocation was in 2021, Ric Edelman argues

article-image

The wallet doesn’t have enough memory for more apps and features but should still function, the company says

article-image

The proof-of-work L1 is betting on parallel-chain scaling, low fees, and a $50 million grant program to lure Solidity developers and tokenized RWA issuers

article-image

Sponsored

Injective is not waiting for the future of finance. It is bringing it directly to us, today.

article-image

Bitcoin has been bullish for nearly 1,000 days

article-image

Robinhood announced that it’s building an L2 and also plans to launch staking for US users