Mysterious Token Airdrop Takes up Nearly 60% of Ethereum's Network

[Magician]

The airdrop of a mysterious ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network has seemingly been taking up 60% of its transactions and taking up most of its capacity unit, gas, in the last few days. The airdrop appears to be taking place to only draw attention.

According to Etherscan data, an ERC-20 token called More Gold Coin (MGC) is being airdropped to thousands of Ethereum addresses for no apparent reason. The airdrop is taking up most of the ETH network’s transactions and gas – a unit that helps calculate fees that measures how much “work” an action takes to perform.

This doesn’t mean transactions on the Ethereum network are skyrocketing, TrustNodes claims, as gas and transacting capacity aren’t the same. The amount of gas used, as mentioned above, depends on the amount of “work” that needs to be done, which means one transaction can consume an amount of gas equal to 100 transactions.

Ethereum transactions over the last 24-hour period have, in fact, fallen as the token’s airdrop is performing computationally intensive calculations, which are taking most of the network’s resources. While the number of transactions dropped, gas usage surged to a new all-time high.

Transaction fees on the ETH network are still fairly low, however, although these depend on the action being performing. Sending some ether has a rather low cost, while sending a non-fungible token through the network may cost more.

At press time the airdrop is still ongoing, although it’s currently only consuming about 6% of the Ethereum network’s resources. Its purpose remains unknown as the MGC token appears to not even have a website.

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