The 1.4 million transactions witnessed on the Ethereum network on Thursday 17 set a new high exceeding the previous record achieved back in 2018
Ethereum’s previous all-time high was set in early January 2018. Between January 3 and January 11 that year, average daily transactions ranged between 1.238 million and 1.256 million. The all-time high at the time was on January 4, where 1.34 million transactions were recorded.
Etherscan data shows a rapid increase in the number of transactions on the world’s second-largest blockchain network before yesterday’s peak.
It is interesting to note that the previous high was recorded at the peak of the initial coin offering frenzy. Since then, the number of daily transactions has exhibited a downward trend with a few occasions of rises.
Between the period of the new high and the previous high, the lowest number of daily transactions on the network was seen on February 10, where only 381,151 transactions were recorded.
It all but seems Decentralised Finance is the new ICO now. Since DeFi becoming a big thing for the network, over $9 billion of the aggregate value has been locked up in several DeFi applications.
The number of daily transactions in early August showed signs of trumping the all-time high from the ICO-era but that didn’t end up happening. It was the launch of the native UNI token by Uniswap that boosted activity on the network and pushed the number of transactions to a new high.
Based on the Etherscan data, September 17 was the busiest day on the Ethereum network. Not only was a new high in daily transactions set, but also the gas fees rose sharply, recording another lifetime high. It is also worth noting that Ethereum beat Bitcoin in terms of USD value of daily transactions for the first time just recently.
Although new daily transaction highs were achieved in the DeFi era, DeFi applications attract less capital compared to initial coin offerings. This is why Ethereum is currently trading 73% below its all-time high of $1,438.