Ethereum has destroyed more than 4.6 million ETH since the London hard fork introduced fee burning in August 2021, erasing roughly $13.57 billion worth of ether at current prices. Even so, the network’s supply has not turned structurally deflationary. Instead, Ethereum is still expanding at an annualized issuance rate of 0.801%, underscoring the ongoing balance between coin issuance and transaction-fee burns.
London Changed Ethereum’s Monetary Design
It has been nearly three years and eleven months since Ethereum activated the London hard fork at block 12,965,000 on Aug. 5, 2021. That upgrade introduced one of the network’s most consequential economic changes: a portion of transaction fees, commonly referred to as gas fees, began to be permanently burned instead of flowing entirely to validators. The mechanism reduced the amount of ETH left in circulation and created a new framework for evaluating Ethereum’s monetary policy.
Since then, market observers have closely tracked whether fee destruction could outweigh newly issued ether. Data cited from ultrasound.money shows that over a span of 1,438 days, the Ethereum network has burned more than 4.6 million ETH. At current ETH/USD valuations, that amounts to about $13.57 billion removed from supply. Spread across the full period, the burn pace averages roughly 2.22 ETH per minute.
Which Activities Have Burned the Most ETH?
The burn data also offers a window into how Ethereum is used. According to the figures referenced in the source material, standard ETH transfers have accounted for the largest share, burning 375,959 ETH. That suggests everyday transactional activity on the network remains a major contributor to ETH destruction.
Among major applications and token flows, the NFT marketplace OpenSea has burned 230,051.12 ETH, while Uniswap V2 has accounted for 227,044.95 ETH. Meanwhile, transactions involving USDT have collectively burned 210,070.05 ETH, showing that stablecoin transfers alone represent a meaningful source of fee pressure on the network. Taken together, the figures illustrate that ETH burning is not tied to a single segment of Ethereum activity, but emerges across payments, decentralized trading, NFTs, and token transfers.
Why Supply Is Still Increasing
Despite the scale of the burn, Ethereum remains inflationary overall. The report says the network’s median issuance rate since the London hard fork stands at 0.801%. In other words, ETH continues to be minted faster than it is permanently removed, at least on a net basis over the longer period measured.
That figure is striking for two reasons. First, it shows that fee burning alone does not automatically produce sustained deflation. Ethereum’s supply outcome depends on the interaction between user activity, fee levels, and the pace of new issuance. Second, the current level places Ethereum very close to Bitcoin’s current issuance rate of 0.809%, according to the source citing Santiment data.
Shorter-term readings look somewhat lower. Seven-day data from ultrasound.money reportedly puts Ethereum’s issuance rate at 0.723%, with 16,745.66 ETH minted over the past week. That indicates the inflation profile can shift over time depending on on-chain demand and the amount of ETH being burned in recent blocks.
Burning Has Slowed Growth, Not Reversed It
The cumulative numbers help clarify Ethereum’s supply trajectory. Since the London upgrade, the network has minted 3,695,537 ETH, adding roughly $10.89 billion in newly created value, based on the pricing referenced in the article. At the same time, more than 4.6 million ETH has been burned. The coexistence of large issuance and large destruction is exactly what makes Ethereum’s monetary system distinct: supply is no longer driven purely by issuance, but by a continuous contest between new coins entering circulation and existing coins being erased.
For investors and analysts, this means the headline burn number alone does not tell the full story. A large cumulative burn can still coexist with positive supply growth if issuance remains high enough over time. Ethereum’s supply model is therefore best understood as dynamic rather than mechanically deflationary.
Still Far Below the Old Proof-of-Work Baseline
Even if Ethereum has not become net deflationary over the measured period, the current regime still looks dramatically different from the network’s old proof-of-work era. The report notes that if Ethereum had remained on proof-of-work (PoW), its inflation rate would have been around 3.394%. Compared with the current 0.801%, that suggests Ethereum’s post-upgrade monetary structure has significantly reduced issuance pressure.
This comparison is important because it reframes the debate. The relevant question is not only whether Ethereum is inflationary today, but also how much inflation has been reduced relative to the system it replaced. On that basis, the fee-burn model appears to have materially altered ETH’s economics, even if it has not delivered permanent net deflation under every market condition.
Bitcoin Comparison Adds Context
The source also compares Ethereum’s recent supply dynamics with Bitcoin’s. While Bitcoin’s current issuance rate is 0.809%, its mean average issuance rate across the same 1,438-day period was 1.476%, noticeably above Ethereum’s 0.801% average since the London fork. Over that span, including the most recent 2024 halving, bitcoin miners produced 1,092,150 BTC, equivalent to about $129.92 billion in newly issued coins according to the cited figures.
The comparison does not imply that Ethereum and Bitcoin have identical monetary systems. Rather, it highlights how unusual Ethereum’s design has become within crypto markets. Bitcoin follows a predictable issuance schedule determined by its protocol, while Ethereum combines issuance with an ongoing fee-burning mechanism that causes supply behavior to respond more directly to actual network usage.
A Monetary Policy Unlike Most Digital Assets
Ethereum’s burn-and-issuance balance remains one of the network’s defining economic features. The data shows that the protocol has already removed a substantial amount of ETH from circulation, but not enough to stop overall supply growth. That tension is likely to remain central to discussions around ETH valuation, scarcity, and long-term monetary credibility.
What stands out most is not simply the size of the burn, but the way Ethereum’s supply reacts to real activity on-chain. When network usage intensifies and fees rise, more ETH is destroyed. When issuance outpaces that destruction, supply grows. As a result, Ethereum occupies a middle ground: not fixed-supply like Bitcoin, but not governed by a simple inflation schedule either.
For now, the figures show a network that has burned billions of dollars in ETH, sharply reduced inflation relative to its old PoW model, and still continued to expand in net supply terms. That combination makes Ethereum’s monetary policy one of the most closely watched experiments in digital asset economics.