More Than 18 Million ETH Addresses Joined The Network In 2021

The latest Ethereum news show that there have been more than 18 million ETH addresses that joined the network in 2021 alone. This indicates a strong and steady increase since last year, but the daily transaction volumes and number of whales on-chain have decreased.

New data reveals that the Ethereum network gained around 18.36 million addresses that show a balance greater than zero last year, which works out to a growth rate of 1.53 million new addresses each month. However, competition is fierce for market share.

If we see the crypto news and findings from the blockchain intelligence firm IntoTheBlock, we’ll see even more details concerning ETH and the addresses added per month and on a yearly basis. The tweet below sums it up.

#Ethereum users growth in a nutshell

A good way to track the adoption is by following the number of addresses with a balance

– There are 70.4m addresses holding $ETH
– Just in 2021, it increased 18.36m. That means the network was growing at a pace of 1.53m addresses per month🤯 pic.twitter.com/xnhDw3wHVm

— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) February 15, 2022

Despite the two all-time highs that Ether reached in 2021, the more than 18 million ETH addresses show that the growth was not correlated to price spikes. Namely, the network has gained around 10 million addresses since October last year.

There has also been a decrease in the proportion of active addresses on the network – overall, the number of active addresses was 1.05% compared to all of the addresses on January 1st, which peaked at 1.66% on April 25th but has since fallen to 0.86% as of February 15th.

Also, the number of whales that hold more than 1,000 ETH has been declining since the beginning of 2021. According to Glassnode and its report on February 13th, the number of whale wallets had reached a 4-year low of only 6,226.

Currently, the more than 18 million ETH addresses show an average daily amount of transactions that stagnated at around 1.2 million since the middle of December, according to the stats shared by Ycharts (an ETH aggregator). The high gas fees and alternatives such as cheaper and faster sidechains and Layer 2 solutions on Ethereum are some of the factors behind that.

For instance, the tremendous spike in usage (May 2021) of the Polygon (MATIC) sidechain averaged more than double the daily transaction volume of Ethereum. Currently, Polygon tracks around 3 million transactions per day.

However, Ethereum is still the leading smart contract platform by total value locked (TVL) in the ecosystem. According to some new stats, Ethereum currently has $124.24 billion in TVL, outstripping the runner-up Terra (LUNA) with $15.04 billion.