Costs to send $1M on leading blockchains

We’ve summarized the costs to send $1,000,000 on ten leading blockchains, based on stablecoin transactions conducted at Brale.

Stablecoins are 5X-1000X cheaper than traditional payment methods

Stablecoin payments on all leading blockchains other than Ethereum mainnet surpass traditional payment method fees, settle nearly instantly, and benefit from 24/7 always on, global operations.

Ethereum Layer 2s, Solana, and Stellar are all less than $0.01 per transaction and up to 100X cheaper than ACH, with stablecoin payments on the latter networks approaching the cost of relational database updates. Even payments on Ethereum mainnet are comparable with wire fees but settle globally in less than 5 minutes.

The costs of stablecoin payments are low enough that programs on Base, Solana, Stellar, and many blockchains can be effectively subsidized by the treasury economics of a stablecoin program.

EIP-4844: proto-danksharding

Following the Ethereum Dencun upgrade in March, improvements including EIP-4844 have dramatically reduced transactions fees in Ethereum Layer 2s with up to 95% fee reductions in Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum.

EIP-4844 introduced a new transaction data type that allows for temporary data storage called “blobs”. The latest data blobs bypass the traditional “call data” process to publish information on the Ethereum mainnet, providing faster transactions at lower fees.

While Base, Arbitrum, and other layer two networks were already much cheaper than Ethereum mainnet, following EIP-4844 they have become ideal networks for payments at scale.

What about the other fees?

Some of the feedback we received based on our previous blog comparing blockchain fees was two-fold. The first was that EIP-4844 would dramatically reduce costs further, which came true very quickly as described above. The other was the cost to effectively deposit or withdraw funds into a stablecoin. Below is the Brale fee schedule for on and offramps using onchain and offchain funding.

Using a Brale Mint account a business can effectively use stablecoins in its operations without the traditional onramp/offramp costs associated with using stablecoins.

We'd love to hear your feedback on these observations, and if there are additional blockchains you'd like to see supported. To support payments using your own stablecoin, sign up for an account.