Monthly mining revenue of Ethereum (ETH) 2015-2021

Ethereum miners made nearly 15 percent more revenue in October 2021 when compared to the previous month - although figures were still lower than in May 2021. That particular month, miners earned a record revenue of more than 2.3 million U.S. dollars - likely due to Ethereum's role within the boom of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and NFTs. Miner revenue normally consists of both block rewards, the initial reward when mining a coin, as well as future transaction fees whenever someone uses the coin you mined. This concept is changed for Ethereum specifically 2021, however, due to the introduction of the EIP-1559 network upgrade in July 2021 - also known as the "London hard fork". This upgrade essentially gets rid of transaction fees entirely (it "burns" them) rather than giving them to the miners that originally "found" those coins. By making mining less attractive this way, the hard fork aims to lessen the amount of Ethereum in circulation.