Unique monthly active addresses on Ethereum mainnet and Layer2 chains have more than doubled over the past two years.
Ethereum's blockchain ecosystem is close to surpassing Bitcoin, the most capitalized blockchain network and cryptocurrency in the market, in terms of monthly active unique addresses, according to data from Blockworks Research.
On average, Ethereum and its L2 chains have around 12,3 million active unique addresses combined, putting this blockchain ecosystem just behind Bitcoin, which maintains around 14 million active unique addresses per month, currently.
Source: Blockworks Research
While Bitcoin remains the most active blockchain in the crypto industry, data from the platform shows that the number of unique addresses in the Ethereum ecosystem has been growing significantly since 2022, especially on its layer 2 networks.
Ethereum is about to reach a new milestone
The number of monthly active unique addresses on the Ethereum blockchain has grown significantly over the past two years, reaching 5,89 million monthly active unique addresses on average today.
According to data from the crypto analytics platform, the Layer (L2) ecosystem built on the Ethereum blockchain has also seen exponential growth in terms of unique active addresses per month. In fact, Blockworks highlights that the growth of the Ethereum ecosystem has mainly shifted to L2 chains, due to the fact that they offer users transactions with lower gas fees than the main network.
L2s are beginning to dominate blockchain activity
Data from the platform indicates that the number of unique active addresses on the market's major blockchains has been declining since hitting all-time highs in the 2021 bull run, while on L2s this number has been steadily increasing.
Currently, the L2 that is leading the growth of active unique addresses in the Ethereum ecosystem is Polygon Network, one of the ecosystem’s leading scaling solutions, which has recorded a higher number of active unique addresses than the mainnet. According to data from Blockworks Research, Polygon recently surpassed Ethereum, with over 6 million active unique addresses per month, currently.
After Polygon Network, zkSync and Arbitrum are the L2s with the highest number of monthly active unique addresses, ranking second and third in Ethereum’s L2 ecosystem. Optimism and Base, two other major solutions that emerged to combat high gas fees on the mainnet, have also seen notable growth in the number of monthly active unique addresses over the past two years.
Based on the above data, Blockworks analysts emphasized that Ethereum and its Layer 2 ecosystem is close to eclipsing the Bitcoin network in terms of on-chain usage and activity.
Financial capital also moves to L2
In addition to seeing steady growth in activity and usage volume, L2 networks are also attracting significant amounts of financial capital, with firms such as a16z Crypto and Offchain Labs increasingly allocating resources to projects developing in this ecosystem.
Last week, the shared sequencing marketplace for Ethereum rollups, Espresso Systems, announced a $28 million funding round led by a16z Crypto. Morph, the new L2 being built on Ethereum with a focus on consumption, also raised $20 million in a funding round led by Dragonfly.
Another project that raised a significant amount of money this month was Succinct, with $55 million in a round led by Paradigm.
Finally, The Encrypted Network, a privacy-focused L2 being developed by the team at Obscuro Labs, raised another $9 million in a funding round earlier this month, led by firms R3, Republic Crypto, Magnus Capital, and DWF Labs, among others.
Continue reading: Cryptocurrency investors made profits of $37,6 billion in 2023, according to Chainalysis
