Cardano: fees covered only 0.7% of staking rewards, transactions down 72%
- —Fees over 73 epochs: 3.3 million ADA versus 493.7 million ADA in rewards, a 149.6x gap
- —Average daily transactions: 90,294 in 2022 versus 24,869 in 2026, a 72.46% decline
- —The bot share of transactions rose from 11.5% to 32.8%
- —The share of staked ADA fell from 75.6% in late 2022 to 58.3% in 2026
Why it matters: The gap shows Cardano's rewards are sustained by reserve emissions rather than fees, and the network needs real activity growth to be sustainable.
Source: CryptoSlate