TLDR

• Polygon surpassed Ethereum in daily transaction fees for the first time ever, with $407,100 in fees compared to Ethereum’s $211,700.
• The surge in Polygon’s fees was driven by significant activity on Polymarket, especially surrounding Oscar betting.
• Polymarket recorded over $15 million in wagers on a single Oscar category over the weekend, contributing to Polygon’s fee growth.
• Polygon’s average transaction fee is around $0.0026, significantly lower than Ethereum’s fee of about $1.68.
• Ethereum’s recent volatility, driven by large whale movements, created a more favorable environment for Polygon’s fee surge.

Polygon recently surpassed Ethereum in daily transaction fees, marking a significant shift in blockchain activity. This occurred when Polygon’s network recorded $407,100 in transaction fees on Friday, compared to Ethereum’s $211,700. The increase in Polygon’s revenue coincided with the surge in activity on Polymarket, particularly with Oscar betting.

Polymarket Drives Fee Surge

Polymarket, a decentralized prediction market, is behind much of Polygon’s newfound fee dominance. Over the weekend, it recorded more than $15 million in wagers for a single Oscar category, attracting considerable retail interest. This surge in betting activity directly translated into substantial network fees for Polygon, which exceeded $1 million in a single week.

This boost in transaction volume significantly impacted Polygon’s overall fee performance. Polymarket, which is built on Polygon’s blockchain, saw consistent traffic, helping drive up daily revenue. As a result, Polygon briefly overtook Ethereum in daily transaction fees, an outcome few expected given Ethereum’s dominant position.

Lower Transaction Fees Give Polygon an Edge

Polygon’s lower transaction costs have made it an attractive alternative to Ethereum for users engaging in frequent, smaller transactions. The average transaction fee on Polygon is around $0.0026, while Ethereum’s fees average about $1.68. This price difference makes Polygon the clear choice for many users, especially in markets like Polymarket, where multiple small bets are common.

The lower costs allow users to move funds more freely, resulting in a higher transaction volume. This increased volume has contributed to Polygon’s fee surge. According to sources, the majority of Polygon’s recent fee growth is attributed to Polymarket’s activity rather than other apps on the network, solidifying the importance of the prediction market.

Ethereum’s Volatility Adds Pressure

While Ethereum remains the dominant blockchain by many measures, its higher fees and increased volatility have made it less appealing for some users. Recently, large whale movements on Ethereum added to concerns about network stability, creating a sense of uncertainty. This has allowed Polygon to capitalize on the growing demand for lower-cost, more predictable transactions.

Despite Ethereum’s structural advantages, the recent surge in Polymarket’s activity has proven that consumer-driven demand can quickly shift fee dynamics.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy continued its Bitcoin buying spree last week, even as crypto winter persisted, and the coin formed a rare chart pattern pointing to more near-term downside.

In an X post, Saylor noted that the company bought 2,496 Bitcoin (BTC) last week for $168 million. This purchase brought its total holdings to 717,131 coins, now valued at nearly $50 billion.

Strategy executed the purchase by selling shares, a move that has continued to dilute its shareholders. Data show that the company still has over $7.8 billion in common shares to sell and an additional $20 billion in preferred STRK.

The company now has over 312 million of outstanding shares, much higher than what it had a few years ago. This dilution will continue, as Michael Saylor has pledged to buy Bitcoin forever. He also revealed that he plans to swap its debt for shares in the future.

Bitcoin price technical analysis points to a crash

The ongoing Strategy acquisition is happening amid concerns that Bitcoin may continue falling in the near term. In a statement last week, Standard Chartered warned that Bitcoin may drop to $50,000 before recovering. The bank reduced its target for the coin from $150,000 to $100,000.

Bitcoin is facing other headwinds, including the tumbling futures open interest, which has moved to $43 billion, down from last year’s high of $95 billion. 

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At the same time, there are rising odds of a prolonged conflict in the Middle East despite the ongoing talks between Iran and the United States. Donald Trump has sent another carrier to the region, while Iran is conducting drills at the Strait of Hormuz.

A conflict in the Middle East would have a major impact on Bitcoin, which has proven that it is not a safe haven asset. 

Technical analysis indicates that the Bitcoin price is slowly forming a bearish pennant pattern, consisting of a vertical line and a symmetrical triangle. The two lines of the triangle are nearing their confluence, meaning that the coin may soon drop to the year-to-date low of $60,000.

The bearish Bitcoin price outlook will become invalid if it moves above the key resistance level at $80,117, its lowest level in November last year.

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Starknet developer StarkWare has integrated EY’s Nightfall privacy protocol to let institutions run private payments and decentralized finance (DeFi) activity on public Ethereum-aligned rails, targeting banks and corporates that need confidentiality without giving up auditability. 

In a Tuesday release shared with Cointelegraph, StarkWare positioned the move as a way for enterprises to use a shared, open layer-2 rather than closed, bank-only networks, while working with a Big Four firm that already audits many of the organizations it wants to onboard.

The integration brings Nightfall, an open-source zero-knowledge (ZK) privacy layer built by EY, that lets transactions be verified without revealing underlying data, onto Starknet to enable private B2B and cross-border payments, confidential treasury management and 24/7 tokenized asset transfers onchain.

StarkWare said that institutions will also be able to access Ethereum DeFi for activities such as lending, swaps and yield strategies, with transactions private by default but supporting selective disclosure, auditability and Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols.

Related: Arbitrum, Optimism and Base weigh in after Vitalik questions L2 scaling model

Starknet and Nightfall target institutional flows

StarkWare frames this as a “major breakthrough” in making public blockchains usable for institutional capital that has so far been deterred by full onchain transparency and the resulting compliance and competitive risks.

Eli Ben-Sasson, StarkWare co-founder and CEO and a founding scientist of privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC), said in the release that blockchains could give every institution “the equivalent of a private superhighway for stablecoins and tokenized deposits,” positioning Nightfall on Starknet as a concrete step toward that vision. 

Alex Gruell, StarkWare’s global head of business development, told Cointelegraph that Nightfall was “particularly useful for institutions requiring ready-to-go KYC verification as part of their onboarding to the blockchain,” and part of a broader privacy push on Starknet.

He said that while crypto native teams had “moved mountains” building ZK infrastructure, the EY-built system added a complementary layer of institutional credibility and “regulatory fluency.”

Related: Vitalik Buterin tempers vision for ETH L2s, pushes native rollups

Gruell also cast Starknet plus Nightfall as an interoperability layer between institutions, contrasting it with what he claimed are “siloed” institutional environments on rival networks, which he said “do not serve as an interoperability infrastructure,” and permissioned models such as Canton Network, which are “not yet integrated with the Web3 ecosystem.”

He stressed that Nightfall would remain permissionless and fully integrated into Starknet, with a staged rollout, where initial deployment focused on “private payments and transfers with compliance gating and secure sequencing in place,” while “verifier upgrades and expanded functionality follow as the system scales.”

Starknet’s growth and teething trouble

Starknet has steadily grown into one of the larger ZK rollups by total value locked (TVL), currently about $280 million, with usage primarily driven by DeFi protocols and native ecosystem apps. 

At the same time, Starknet’s rapid scaling push has exposed reliability challenges. In 2025, the network suffered major outages tied to sequencer and infrastructure issues, prompting public post-mortems and commitments to harden reliability before courting more institutional flow. 

Magazine: Back to Ethereum — How Synthetix, Ronin and Celo saw the light