Polygon tops Ethereum fees as Polymarket activity rises

TLDR

• Polygon surpasses Ethereum in daily transaction fees, $407k versus $212k.
• Token Terminal reports first recorded instance of Polygon exceeding Ethereum on fees.
• Daily fees reflect 24-hour total, not average transaction costs or revenue.

Polygon has overtaken Ethereum in daily transaction fees, reaching $407,100 on Friday versus $211,700 for Ethereum, based on data from Token Terminal. The figures indicate this is the first recorded instance of Polygon exceeding Ethereum on this metric.

In this context, daily transaction fees refer to total network fees paid within a 24-hour period, not average cost per transaction or protocol revenue. The snapshot highlights fee capture on the day and may differ from longer-term averages.

Spike driven by Polymarket; weekend gap narrowed to ~$303k vs ~$285k

The weekend gap narrowed to roughly $303,000 for Polygon against about $285,000 for Ethereum, as reported by Cointelegraph (https://cointelegraph.com/news/polygon-flips-ethereum-in-daily-transaction-fees). Activity was heavily concentrated in the Polymarket prediction platform rather than broadly distributed across applications.

“The surge was fully driven by Polymarket,” said Matthias Seidl, co-founder of growthepie. He shared that fees from Polymarket exceeded $1 million over seven days, while the next-largest Polygon app generated around $130,000 in the same period.

Such concentration suggests an application-led anomaly rather than a structural shift. Sustained leadership would require broader, multi-app fee generation.

What this means for users, developers, and Ethereum-Polygon fee dynamics

For users, higher total fees do not necessarily imply higher per-transaction cost. Average costs were not provided in the cited datasets, and can vary by time of day and application mix.

For developers, fee capture depends on where users transact. Dencun’s cost reductions for rollups have intensified competition for L1 fee revenue, as reported by Coinness (https://coinness.com/en/news/1022733). Builder decisions may hinge on latency, unit costs, and liquidity access.

For Ethereum–Polygon dynamics, the episode underscores how a single high-volume venue can tilt daily totals. It does not, by itself, establish a long-term flip in fee leadership.