NFTs accounted for 28% of the ETH gas usage in January

CryptoSlate analysts examined the gas usage shares of different transaction categories on the Ethereum (ETH) network and found that the NFTs category accounted for 28% in the first month of the year.

The analysis divides all transactions on the ETH network into eight categories as Vanilla, ERC20, Stablecoins, DeFi, Bridges, NFTs, MEV Bots, and others.

The second, third, and fourth categories that occupied the most significant gas usage by share appeared as Defi, ERC20, and stablecoins, with 8% for Defi and ERC20 and 6% for stablecoins.

The categories

The vanilla category includes pure ETH transfers between Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) issued without calling any contracts. The ERC20 class counts all transactions that call ERC20 contracts, excluding stablecoin transactions.

The stablecoins category represents all fungible tokens that have their value pegged to an off-chain asset either by the issuer or by an algorithm. This category includes over 150 stablecoins, with Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD), and DAI (DAI) being the most prominent ones.

The Defi category covers all on-chain financial instruments and protocols implemented as smart contracts. Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) also fall under this category. More than 90 Defi protocols are represented under this section, including Uniswap (UNI), Etherdelta, 1 inch (1INCH), Sushiswap (SUSHI), and Aave (AAVE).

Bridges represent all contracts that allow the transfer of tokens between different blockchains and includes over 50 bridges such as Ronin, Polygon (MATIC), Optimism (OP), and Arbitrum (ARBI).

All transactions interacting with non-fungible tokens fall under the NFTs category. This section includes both ERC721 and ERC1155 token contract standards and NFT marketplaces for trading them.

MEV bots, or Miner Extractable Value bots, represent bots that automatically execute transactions for profit by reordering, inserting, and censoring transactions within blocks.

All remaining ETH transactions are…