Diar: Average Bitcoin Transaction Fees Increased by Nearly 200% From March to April

Average bitcoin transaction fees increased by nearly 200% in April compared to March, a report released by crypto research firm Diar on May 6.

The report also notes that bitcoin miners earned $13.7 million from fees alone - over 71% up from $3.9 million - the amount they made from fees during the previous month.

The overall mining earnings in April were $291 million, up nearly 30% compared to March.

The on-chain transaction volume has reportedly risen 43% during April and resulted in full blocks, while Segregated Witness approached 40% of the total transactions per block and blocks regularly exceeded the one-megabyte block limit.

The number of on-chain bitcoin transactions reported in April approached the all-time-high of 11.2 million transactions reported in December 2017, 1-2 block confirmation times are 84% lower than seen at the peak, Diar writes.

"Diar estimates that at current SegWit usage levels, fees could go up as high as 300% should on-chain movement of Bitcoins resemble that seen in at the end of 2017.".

Lastly, the report claims that fees would be over 55% cheaper than in December 2018, since SegWit is working as intended.

Bitcoin implemented SegWit in 2016 by the means of a soft fork.

The Diar report also noted that ether transaction volumes on decentralized applications has registered a new high.

As Cointelegraph reported yesterday, bitcoin developer Pieter Wuille has unveiled two proposals on GitHub for a Taproot soft fork, with the aim to reveal less information after a bitcoin transaction takes place.