How is Ethereum activity growing?

Ethereum activity is witnessing explosive growth across multiple metrics. Key indicators include:

1. Daily Active Addresses: Flirting with all-time highs of around 500,000 addresses, indicating high user engagement 1.
2. Gas Usage: The network is at its maximum capacity, with 8 billion gas units used daily, showing heavy utilization 1.
3. Stablecoin Issuance: $16 billion in stablecoins are issued, a parabolic increase highlighting Ethereum’s dominance in the crypto market 1.
4. DeFi Users and Value: Total DeFi users hit nearly 1 million, up 10x from the beginning of the year, with $14 billion locked in DeFi protocols and significant activity on decentralized exchanges (DEXes) with $20 billion in volume in the last 30 days 1.

Layer 2 solutions are also burgeoning. Transactions on Layer 2 networks now regularly outpace those on Ethereum's Layer 1. Arbitrum, for example, supports up to 4.5 transactions per second compared to Ethereum's 12 2.

Considerable improvements in gas efficiency over time have resulted in Ethereum scaling approximately 50x since its inception. This includes a 5x increase in the gas limit and a 10x improvement in gas-efficient coding practices 3.

Moreover, Ethereum is expected to settle over $1 trillion in value in 2020, surpassing Bitcoin in this regard, and indicating robust economic activity on its network 4.

In the broader scope, Ethereum's fundamentals remain strong. Notable metrics include high fees paid by users, indicative of network demand, and doubling active addresses year-to-date, marking an all-time high 5.

These trends collectively underscore Ethereum's significant and expanding role in the crypto and decentralized finance ecosystems.