$12 million worth of ETH burned in the first 24 hours post EIP-1559 upgrade

Following Ethereum’s much anticipated London upgrade on Thursday, the network has burned 4,600 ETH in the first 24 hours.

As reported by BTC PEERS, the upgrade which went live at 12:33 UTC, at block height 12,965,000, has been dubbed a success by co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Within the first few hours, a few hundred ETH was burned, an amount that has continued to climb. In the first 24 hours, an estimated 4,600 ETH, worth around $12 million, was burned. As of press time, this number had increased to 8,182 ETH, according to block explorer Etherchain's burn tracker.

The new burn mechanism was introduced by EIP-1559. The upgrade is designed to help the Ethereum network handle high demand better. It requires a base fee, which will be burned, and then users can decide to tip miners if they want to speed up their transactions. The said base fee typically rises when there is a high network demand and drops with decreased demand.

Despite the burn mechanism, it is worth mentioning that the Ethereum network is not deflationary. For every block mined, 2 ETH is assigned to miners. In total, miners receive about 12,700 ETH every day. On the flip side, the upgrade is currently lowering the level of inflation by 36%.

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