Charges, as measured by median fuel costs, spiked to as excessive as 270 gwei late on Thursday, briefly touching a degree final seen in June 2022. That pushed up prices of buying and selling swaps to wherever from $60 to $100 for just a few hours. Gwei is a small unit of ether (ETH) equal to one-billionth of an ETH and is used to denominate fuel costs. Fuel refers back to the charges Ethereum customers pay to make sure their transactions are included within the earliest block by community validators.