Ethereum Token Supply Surges Post-Merge
The token supply of Ethereum has seen a significant surge, bringing it back to pre-Merge levels and marking the network’s longest inflationary period since shifting to proof-of-stake.
Current Total Supply
According to data from ultrasound.money, Ethereum’s total supply now stands at 120,521,673 ETH. This reflects a net increase of 542 ETH from the 120,526,017 ETH recorded at the time of the Merge in 2022.
Reasons for Supply Spike
The recent increase in supply can be attributed to the changes introduced in the March 2024 Dencun upgrade. This upgrade slashed Ethereum’s base fee burn rate by reserving block space for layer-2 networks to handle bundled transactions, known as blobs. Additionally, the proto-danksharding mechanism increased data availability, leading to a significant drop in base fees.
Market observers have noted that the lower transaction fees have disrupted Ethereum’s deflationary mechanism, resulting in the network minting more ETH than it destroys. This has effectively erased nearly two years’ worth of supply reduction in less than a year since the rollout of EIP-4844.
