Ethereum’s daily active addresses hit an all-time high of 1.1M, overtaking the previous peak of 718,000 set in 2018 by a massive 50%, as reported by crypto analytics firm IntoTheBlock.
A total of 1.6M transactions were processed over the network on Tuesday, while Eth gas prices remained low.
An address is recognized as active if it has participated in a transaction in the past 24 hours. The metric is widely used as an indicator to track the level of on-chain activity. Any positive movement signifies increased adoption and demand for ETH.
However, industry experts aren’t quite sure of the reason behind this spike in active addresses and are still investigating.
Conor Grogan, the Head of Strategy at crypto exchange Coinbase, wrote in a Twitter thread that the surge in active addresses may have happened due to the number of token transfers per unit of gas rather than wider adoption.
He reasons events such as “Binance doing a maintenance sweep” may be linked to the “mundane” transfer activity, in contrast with more “productive activity like Defi/NFTs.”
Active addresses on the Ethereum network have been steadily growing over the past two years after hitting a low of 364,400, per data from analytics firm Santiment.
Over the past two days, Tether (USDT) – the largest stablecoin by market cap – has also witnessed spikes in daily active addresses.
The development comes amid the announcement of Ethereum’s much-anticipated transition to proof-of-stake, expected to be released on Sept 19, with the final Goerli/Prater testnet merge scheduled for early August.
