cryptoknowmics.com
Ethereum scaling solution Polygon has been on the receiving end of a surging high gas fee, several times higher than their normal rate. The reason is the play-to-earn crypto game 'Sunflower Farmers' clogging the blockchain network amid its rising popularity and high demand.
Sunflower Farmers Clogging the Polygon Network
NFT game Sunflower Farmers now accounts for more than 40 percent of gas consumption on the Polygon network. This has resulted in the network’s gas fees rising to more than 700 Gwei in the past two days alone. That’s nearly thrice as much as the previous high of 226 recorded on December 4, according to Polygon’s block explorer.
Sunflower Farmers is a play-to-earn crypto game that was launched at the end of December 2021. Since its rollout, gas fees have increased by over 16 times on the Polygon Network, a widely-used Ethereum scaling solution.
The surge in gas fees even caused issues in the launch of certain decentralized applications (DaPPs). For instance, the NFT rental protocol Double Protocol announced the postponement of its Alpha Pass, which was scheduled for launch earlier today.
With over 360,000 users, DappRadar ranks Sunflower Farmer as the number two app across all blockchains in those terms over the past 24 hours, second to PancakeSwap on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and ahead of Axie Infinity and OpenSea.
This isn’t the first time an NFT game slowed down a blockchain network. The most notable example is the popular game CryptoKitties clogging the Ethereum blockchain.
Despite the current surge, Polygon gas fee still remains cheaper compared to Ethereum wherein a single transaction costs anywhere between $50-$120.