Base: nearly three times the transactions, lower dollar fees
2024 → 2025: 1.32 → 3.69 billion transactions. Total fees: $88.7M → $78.2M. One chain; transactions are not people.
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More transactions need not mean higher total fees. On Base these measures moved in opposite directions in 2025.
Bars show percentage changes over the same year: right for growth, left for decline. Absolute totals are below the chart.
- Base Chain: annual transactions million transactions per year
2024: 1,321.25
- Base Chain: annual transactions million transactions per year
2025: 3,685.55
- Base Chain: user-paid chain fees million USD per year
2024: 88.69
- Base Chain: user-paid chain fees million USD per year
2025: 78.23
growthepie: daily totals for complete 2024 and 2025. Change = (2025 / 2024 − 1) × 100. Fees divided by transactions: 6.71 → 2.12 cents per transaction.
Mean cost is not the median or a quoted transaction price. Dollar totals depend on ETH prices, the transaction mix and network pricing; this comparison does not separate causes. Bots and repeated transactions are included. Partial 2026 is excluded.
A question for this picture
Does the divergence hold when fees are measured in ETH?