Ethereum Gas Site Fees.wtf’s $WTF Token Down 80%, Following $SOS and $GAS

The cult website Fees.wtf, which shows Ethereum users their beingness gas walk connected transactions, saw its $WTF token plummet 80% successful its archetypal week post-airdrop.

According to Coinmarketcap, the $WTF token terms has plummeted much than 80% from its precocious of $0.20 connected Thursday evening to $0.03 arsenic of Monday morning.

Fees.wtf launched successful aboriginal 2019 arsenic a lighthearted mode to amusement users their full transaction costs paid per Ethereum wallet.

“I was looking to amusement radical however overmuch state they’ve spent successful an casual to comprehend format,” the anonymous laminitis of Fees.wtf told CoinDesk via Twitter. “As clip went connected and ETH accrued successful value, the website's popularity grew arsenic abruptly radical realized those cheaper transactions successful the past person added up to a batch of USD.”

Fees.wtf appears to person taken a leafage from the playbook of GasDAO, different task that launched past period that rewarded users with airdropped tokens based connected a wallet’s state usage.

Ethereum transaction costs, colloquially referred to arsenic “gas fees,” person agelong been a symptom constituent successful the Ethereum community, with galore bemoaning that precocious transaction costs person made Ethereum Layer 1 unusable for the mean retail user. A azygous transaction (such arsenic purchasing an NFT oregon swapping tokens connected decentralized speech Uniswap) could scope from $15-$20 connected the little extremity to thousands of dollars during periods of highest demand.

On December 29, Ethereum users that person spent much than a $1,559 threshold successful state fees (a tongue-in-cheek notation to EIP-1559) were eligible to assertion $GAS tokens.

GasDAO, successful turn, followed successful the footsteps of OpenDAO, a task that launched connected Christmas Eve, airdropping users of non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea with escaped $SOS tokens.

All 3 projects lured users into claiming escaped tokens and advertised precocious yields for staking the tokens, adjacent arsenic the values of the tokens person gone into freefall conscionable days aft the archetypal launch.

As Ethereum users raced to assertion $WTF tokens during past Thursday’s airdrop, the congestion sent Fees.wtf to the apical of Etherscan’s “Top Gas Guzzlers” dashboard, adjacent rendering Ethereum adjacent unstable for implicit an hour.

“At 1 constituent it was adjacent to 40% of full state usage,” a subordinate of the Fees.wtf squad told CoinDesk via Twitter. “I deliberation a acquisition to beryllium learned present – for those that haven't already learnt it from different launches – is to cheque state prices earlier you conscionable blindly click submit, arsenic I'm definite a fewer radical paid a hefty sum to get their airdrop.”

Posting one’s Fees.wtf state usage has besides go a flex for Ethereum users to some bemoan the precocious state costs and awesome one’s ‘whale’ status. Some longtime users of the Ethereum blockchain person taken to Twitter to station screenshots of their state usage, with immoderate exceeding millions of dollars.

The Fees.wtf squad is composed of 4 anonymous members – a manager, assemblage lead, developer and designer, who person each “been successful the cryptocurrency abstraction for galore years” and “seen the improvement of the Ethereum ecosystem,” a subordinate of the squad told CoinDesk.

For now, the Fees.wtf squad is focused connected processing the Pro Dashboard, a diagnostic granted lone to holders of the Fees.wtf NFT. That was airdropped to each claimants who were required to wage 0.01 ETH (approximately $33).

“We’re hard astatine enactment processing features that our users person been asking for implicit the years,” said a subordinate of the Fees.wtf team. “The dashboard volition absorption not lone connected however overmuch state you’ve spent, but we’ll besides look astatine ‘what ifs’, assistance with state usage for taxation implications, and besides effort to assistance users find the cheapest times to marque transactions.”

However it appears that the caller Pro Dashboard has nary narration with the $WTF token, the second of which appears to clasp small utility. The squad hasn't yet indicated whether the token would supply governance use-cases for the task oregon beryllium incorporated into the caller dashboard product.

“I've ever been a instrumentality of the site, and truthful I anticipation the token does extremity up having a existent usage case,” Twitter idiosyncratic and assemblage codification reviewer @0xQuit told CoinDesk.

Until then, strap connected the parachutes – it appears airdrop economics are succumbing to 1 inevitable force: gravity.