Ethereum....and let the whole world wait

[MOONWALKER 181]

Over the last couple of months, the Ethereum network has reported record activity, peaking at over one million transactions a day. This growth has come at a price in the form of slow or backlogged transactions, causing fees to reach record highs and ICO participants to miss out on token sales after failing to push their ether through in time. On Wednesday January 17, two exchanges reported ethereum withdrawal issues that were affecting users.

First up was Bitstamp, which noted that there were ETH withdrawal delays, before updating the situation four hours later to say the matter had been resolved. Users of Kucoin exchange have been more significantly affected  on account of ethereum withdrawal delays that have dragged on for days. The exchange posted the following notice on Wednesday, including a novel suggestion: that users withdraw in neo instead of ether. This suggestion is unlikely to have been of much help to users who needed their ETH to interact with the ethereum ecosystem.

More Gas, More Money, More Problems

Following the notice, Kucoin followed up with a blog post containing a form to be filled in by users who were still waiting for their ethereum withdrawals to be processed. A week prior, the exchange had explained that ETH withdrawals were subject to delays as they were being released at four-hour intervals. Not everyone has been convinced by Kucoin’s decision to lay the blame on the Ethereum network though, with some users pointing out that the exchange’s ETH withdrawal fees are five times higher than on other sites, which seem to be processing transactions just fine.

What is beyond dispute is that numerous exchanges have encountered similar problems of late, with Bittrex reporting only a week ago: “Due to incredibly high gas prices, we’re preventing new ETH and asset deposit addresses from being created. Existing deposit addresses will work as normal.”

Eth Gas Station currently reports fast transactions as requiring 51 gwei, or around $0.93 to process. The web is awash with crypto projects promising that their new blockchain can handle a gazillion transactions a second. The reality, however, is that if these networks were ever to be stress tested in the wild like Ethereum or Bitcoin, they would face the exact same same problems. Scaling blockchains while preserving decentralization is even harder than it sounds.

full story here: https://news.bitcoin.com/ethereum-network-congestion-forces-exchanges-halt-withdrawals/

 

[Dezza 72]

Been waiting 2 days for ETH to transfer from Coinbase to GateHub! Yet took 1 hour to transfer the remainder of ETH from Coinbase to Binance (sent at the same time!).

Bought more cheap stock with existing ETH in my Binance account, but missed out buying a few hundred extra XRP today because of these damn delays! Still haven’t got the funds in GateHub. 

Proves amazing when I can buy/sell/transfer XRP in a few seconds between accounts, at a fraction of the cost!

[Zockempire 46]

I often wonder, how all these coins can function with the high transaction costs.  There is so much unfounded optimism in this space.
I mean, with a transaction fee of 2-5$ for some database coins, who want's to use that database? It is not efficient at all.

[jhollywood 70]

8 minutes ago, Dezza said:

Been waiting 2 days for ETH to transfer from Coinbase to GateHub! Yet took 1 hour to transfer the remainder of ETH from Coinbase to Binance (sent at the same time!).

Bought more cheap stock with existing ETH in my Binance account, but missed out buying a few hundred extra XRP today because of these damn delays! Still haven’t got the funds in GateHub. 

Proves amazing when I can buy/sell/transfer XRP in a few seconds between accounts, at a fraction of the cost!

It's a gatehub problem.  I sent Eth from Coinbase to Binance in less than 30 mins.  Sending XRP to gatehub is great, anything else- forget about it, takes waaaaay too long

[Newsmaker22 63]

I stopped with ETH all together.  I buy LTC on coinbase and send to Binance.  It's fast and it's literally like 10-15 cents for $200 transfer.  And vice versa...cash out on Binance with LTC and send back to Coinbase.  Again, fast and cheap.

[Dezza 72]

4 minutes ago, jhollywood said:

It's a gatehub problem.  I sent Eth from Coinbase to Binance in less than 30 mins.  Sending XRP to gatehub is great, anything else- forget about it, takes waaaaay too long

Agreed. As I mentioned, I sent half my ETH from Coinbase I Binance and the other half to Gatehub. The one to Binance was there after 1 hour and traded for XRP, and I’m still waiting on GH after 2 days. That’s the reason I like splitting, rather than relying only on one source. But I know for future to avoid GH, they almost always have longer delays.

[Dezza 72]

Just now, Newsmaker22 said:

I stopped with ETH all together.  I buy LTC on coinbase and send to Binance.  It's fast and it's literally like 10-15 cents for $200 transfer.  And vice versa...cash out on Binance with LTC and send back to Coinbase.  Again, fast and cheap.

Wise. Will be doing this going forward! Not used GateHub much but I like to keep options open and use various sources, but will stick to LTC to Binance for future transfers.

[Dymac 165]

4 minutes ago, Newsmaker22 said:

I stopped with ETH all together.  I buy LTC on coinbase and send to Binance.  It's fast and it's literally like 10-15 cents for $200 transfer.  And vice versa...cash out on Binance with LTC and send back to Coinbase.  Again, fast and cheap.

Same here. First time I did it with bitcoin and then realized how dumb that was because of the fees. Litecoin way cheaper and way faster. 

[jhollywood 70]

When things aren't bottlenecked gatehub is a lot faster, not sure why they haven't anticipated the rush- maybe they don't care, ether way- they've lost a lot of business. 

It can be helpful to have eth on gatehub waiting on standby for buying opportunities, the volume is so low that you can sometimes get great deals... or the exact opposite. 

I'm very surprised that coinbase doesn't have more american competition.  If binance was a usd onramp they'd crush coinbase.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Newsmaker22 said:

I stopped with ETH all together.  I buy LTC on coinbase and send to Binance.  It's fast and it's literally like 10-15 cents for $200 transfer.  And vice versa...cash out on Binance with LTC and send back to Coinbase.  Again, fast and cheap.

This is what I do except I use Bittrex. Then I have to transfer LTC to either ETH or BTC to trade. It's an extra step but takes about 30 seconds to do the extra trade and saves a ton of time and money. 

[rjzerp 26]

Sent eth from conbase kraken in about 10 minutes earlier was surprised at the speed...

Not 3 seconds though !

[SaladFingers 104]

hitbtc had big problems with eth and erc20 tokens too. Seems to have been sorted out now the dynamic fees have been introduced.

[Zockempire 46]

Have a look at the Ethereum transaction fees chart. It is the same development like with Bitcoin. In January 2017, the average fee was around 0.007 USD, now we have a fee of 1,55 USD. That is an increase of 221 times (!).  During the recent hype, Ethereum fees have been 4$ and more. That would be an increase of 571 times.

I wonder how the want to stay competetive. Ripple has invested in the codius platform. Soon there will be smartcontracts over the ripple network.

But our transaction fee is well below Ethereum with only 0.0004 USD.

Here a graphic with Ethereum fees: https://bitinfocharts.com/de/comparison/ethereum-transactionfees.html

Here see, how XRP compares to other coins: https://ripple.com/xrp/xrp-stacks-digital-assets/

[jhollywood 70]

2 hours ago, SaladFingers said:

hitbtc had big problems with eth and erc20 tokens too. Seems to have been sorted out now the dynamic fees have been introduced.

SaladFingers - Love the handle!  Talk about a creepy throwback to yesteryear.

[RippleDrifter 99]

@jhollywood Do you have any rusty spoons?