The supply of Ether, the native coin of the Ethereum blockchain network may be entering a deflationary regime just like it was projected with the introduction of EIP-1559. At the moment, the controversial Ethereum Improvement proposal that shipped along with other proposals in the London Hardfork Upgrade in August is removing a remarkable 6.28 ETH per minute.
In the 131 days since EIP-1559 went live on the Ethereum blockchain, almost 1.2 million ETH (currently worth over $4.4 billion) have been burned according to Ultrasound Money. At this rate, it is estimated that 3.3 million ETH will be burned in a year.
The burn rate has been contributed to in large part by non-fungible token trading, stable coins, and decentralized finance protocols on the blockchain network. This is shown by the fact that OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace by both volume and trades, has been the all-time leader of token burning with over 125,000 ETH burned from transactions carried out on the platform. The next biggest contributor to the fee burn is native transfers of Ether on the blockchain, followed closely by DeFi protocol Uniswap V2, and then Tether, the biggest stablecoin by market cap.
