On its way to another all-time high for price, Ethereum hit another milestone.
According to data from blockchain explorer Etherscan, the Ethereum network reached 1 billion transactions today.
The Ethereum blockchain went live in 2015. In May 2017, it broke 100,000 daily transaction for the first time—then 1 million in January 2018 as the price rose to then-record highs above $1,000.
After the bull market gave way to a bearish one, daily transactions cooled, averaging between 500,000 and 1 million per day. But since June 2020, transactions have consistently peaked above the 1 million daily mark, driven upward by the use of decentralized finance applications built atop the blockchain.
DeFi apps such as Aave and Uniswap allow traders to earn interest on their holdings and swap assets without going through a centralized bank or exchange.
Instead, they rely on Ethereum’s infrastructure. And there are many transactions occurring via such protocols. There’s now over $35 billion in value locked up in DeFi protocols tracked by DeFi Pulse.
Increased use of the blockchain put strain on the network; it pushed up gas fees on an increasingly congested blockchain. The proof-of-stake Ethereum 2.0 network, which went live last year but is not yet fully functional, is designed to process a larger amount of transactions—and quickly.
If daily transaction rates stay steady, the Ethereum blockchain would hit 2 billion transactions in a little over two years. Users are hoping Eth2 is ready to go before ETH hits that milestone.