Cardano fees covered just 0.7% of staking rewards as transactions fall 72%

Cardano collected 3.3 million ADA in transaction fees while recording 493.7 million ADA in staking rewards across the 73 epochs ending Sept. 1, 2026, according to Bitquery's full-chain count. Fees covered about 0.668% of rewards, leaving the reward total roughly 149.6 times larger than fee revenue.The figures turn Cardano's fee-replacement question into a measured economic gap. Planned upgrades may give the network enough throughput to process far more activity, while sustainable staking rewards still depend on applications and users generating substantially more fee revenue.Cardano's fee-reward gap spans two measurement windowsThe Bitquery analysis counted Cardano transactions from the network's first block and grouped the latest reward comparison into 73 five-day epochs from Sept. 1, 2025, through Sept. 1, 2026.Its 3.3 million ADA fee total amounted to about one ADA for every 150 ADA in staking rewards. Reserve emissions supplied the dominant share of the reward economy during the period.Cardano's epoch 655 supply page offers a shorter official snapshot. It attributed 108,500 transactions and 33,855 ADA in fees to completed epoch 654. Spread across five days, that was about 21,70...