---
title: "Gas Gas Revolution"
description: "Explore how blockchain transaction costs dropped 95% from $37 to $2, mirroring AWS's path to $90B revenue through continuous price reductions in cloud computing."
categories: ["web3","trends","data analysis"]
keywords: ["blockchain transaction costs","AWS pricing strategy","Ethereum gas fees","layer 2 solutions","data storage costs","cloud computing economics","SaaS pricing models","Eroom's Law","decentralized applications","gas gas revolution"]
ai_summary: "Explore how blockchain transaction costs have drastically decreased, paralleling AWS's pricing strategy and its impact on software development."
date: 2023-10-27
lastmod: 2026-07-28
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/aws-eth-cost-reductions/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---

In 2021,  Amazon announced they had reduced prices on Amazon Web Services [107 times since launch.](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws-cost-management/amazon-ec2-15th-years-of-optimizing-and-saving-your-it-costs/)

This drop in prices has grown AWS into a $90b revenue business in 17 years. As storage & compute became less expensive, the economic viability of new use cases became increasingly apparent & developers built software on the cloud.   

The same cost-reduction phenomenon is occurring with blockchains, though it's not nearly as well
publicized.

![image](https://res.cloudinary.com/dzawgnnlr/image/upload/jjzvtrypjak8vkpxyhgl.png)

The cost to save data to a blockchain is called gas. In 2021, at the peak, the
average quarterly gas fee on Ethereum reached about $37. To send a file (an NFT
perhaps) to a friend, [cost the user
$37.](https://dune.com/queries/3151605/5257718) 

Some days that figure soared about $70. 

At those prices, not many transactions are economically viable. Compare that to
AWS' managed database, Aurora, which charges [$0.0000002 per
request](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/pricing/). (I'm ignoring the storage
cost here).

However, over the last few years, we have seen a meaningful reduction in the
cost per transaction. First, Ethereum overall has fallen from $37 to $2. 

Newer technologies called layer 2s, which are faster, less expensive databases
running atop Ethereum have further cut the price to $0.15 for Optimism & $0.08
for Arbitrum.

Some newer blockchain databases like Sui have further pushed that [cost to
$0.0019 as of this writing. ](https://suiscan.xyz/mainnet/analytics/avg-gas-fee)


| Database | Cost per Transaction in $ | Cost Multiple Relative to AWS | 
| ---- | ---: | ---: | 
| AWS Aurora | 0.0000002 | 1 | 
| Ethereum Peak | 37 | 185m | 
| Ethereum Today | 2.67 | 13.4m | 
| Optimism | 0.15 | 750k | 
| Arbitrum | 0.08 | 400k |  
| Sui | 0.0019 | 9.5k | 

The trend is evident & inexorable. The cost to store data on block chains has
fallen five orders of magnitude in the last 3 years. 

It's a sort of inverse Moore's Law - let's call it Eroom's Law for fun.

As Eroom's law continues to progress, I expect we'll see the cost to store data on a blockchain approach that of a classic database like Aurora. More (e)room for data for
less dollars.

AWS Aurora has benefitted from efficiency gains since 1986 - 37 years of
development. Ethereum, the oldest blockchain database listed, turned 8 this
year. 

Given another few years at this pace of innovation, it's not unreasonable to
expect blockchains to be cost-competitive to classical databases.

More than that, they offer different types of promises to developers for data
sovereignty, mathematical proofs, resiliency, & resistance to attack.

It's the gas gas revolution. As the gas costs fall, more applications will be
built on blockchains.