Why has Ethereum’s supply increased for 73 consecutive days?

Author: Tom Mitchelhill, CoinTelegraph; Compiler: Baishui, Golden Finance

The supply of new Ethereum has been in its longest period of inflation since the 2022 merger, and the blockchain's Dencun upgrade in March appears to be the cause.

According to data from Ethereum data dashboard ultrason.money, The supply of Ethereum has been gradually increasing, with the total supply increasing by more than 112,000 ETH since April 14.

This inflationary activity can largely be attributed to the Dencun upgrade implemented on March 13. This upgrade introduced nine Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), including EIP-4844, which appears to be the main cause of inflation.

ETH supply has been increasing since April 14. Source: ultrasonic.money

EIP-4844 introduces "blobs", a mechanism that allows transaction data to be temporarily stored separately, thereby reducing the fees paid for block data on the Ethereum Layer 2 network.

In addition, Dencun introduced original danksharding, which provides more efficient data availability for block space on the Ethereum mainnet.

While this has made it significantly cheaper to execute transactions on Ethereum Layer 2 networks such as Abritrum and Optimism, the total amount of ETH burned on the mainnet has also been significantly reduced as a result.

Despite inflation in the ETH supply in recent months, the total ETH supply has dropped significantly since the merger.

Since September 2022, a total of over 1.5 billion ETH has been destroyed, while 1.36 billion ETH has been added, resulting in a reduction in the overall supply of 345,000 ETH, which is equivalent to just over $1.1 billion at current prices since the switch to the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism.

Since the merger, more than $1.1 billion worth of ETH has been burned. Source: ultrasound.money