Polymarket Boom Pushes Polygon Daily Fees Past Ethereum

Edgen Crypto

·Feb 17 2026, 07:17

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Key Takeaways

Polygon has overtaken Ethereum in daily transaction fees for the first time, a milestone driven almost entirely by explosive growth on the prediction market platform, Polymarket. The event underscores Polygon's increasing utility as a high-throughput, low-cost layer-2 solution for demanding decentralized applications.

Polygon's daily transaction fees hit $407,100 on Friday, nearly double Ethereum's $211,700.
Prediction market Polymarket was the primary driver, generating over $1 million in fees on Polygon in a single week.
The activity surge coincided with a new weekly high of 28 million USDC transactions on Polygon, the stablecoin used by Polymarket.

Polymarket Activity Drives Polygon Fees Past $400,000

For the first time, the Polygon network generated more in daily transaction fees than the Ethereum mainnet, marking a significant milestone for the layer-2 scaling solution. On Friday, Polygon collected $407,100 in fees, substantially outpacing Ethereum's $211,700 for the same period. The gap narrowed over the weekend, with Saturday's figures showing Polygon at $303,000 versus Ethereum's $285,000, but the event highlights a notable shift in on-chain economic activity.

Prediction Market Accounts for Over $1M in Weekly Fees

The surge in Polygon's network fees is almost entirely attributable to the prediction market platform, Polymarket. According to analysis from Matthias Seidl, co-founder of analytics platform growthepie, Polymarket alone accounted for over $1 million in fees on Polygon over the past seven days. This figure dwarfs the network's next-highest application, Origin World, which generated approximately $130,000 in the same timeframe. The platform's intense user activity was underscored by a single betting market for the Oscars, which attracted over $15 million in wagers.

This boom in Polymarket activity directly translates to fundamental on-chain metrics for Polygon. The network also recorded a new weekly high of 28 million transactions for Circle's USDC stablecoin, which Polymarket uses for trading and settlement. This synergy demonstrates how a single, popular application can drive substantial economic activity to a layer-2 network, validating its core purpose of scaling the broader Ethereum ecosystem.