The enthusiasm for the DeFi carnival has not diminished, and the level of smart contract activity on the Ethereum chain has reached a new high

Editor's Note: This article comes fromBabbitt Information (ID: bitcoin8btc), Author: Alexander Behrens, Compiler: Libert, published with permission.

Babbitt Information (ID: bitcoin8btc)

Babbitt Information (ID: bitcoin8btc)

, Author: Alexander Behrens, Compiler: Libert, published with permission.

DeFi has driven unprecedented levels of activity on the Ethereum network as the world's most popular decentralized computing protocol is being stress-tested by smart contract applications and users.

image description

Image source: unsplash

In the past few months, contract calls on Ethereum have surged to unprecedented levels, far surpassing the highs seen in 2017 and the summer of 2019, according to data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode.

Contract calls to external addresses are an indicator of how all users interact with Ethereum, and this data is currently growing rapidly. Coupled with high gas prices and other indicators, it shows that DeFi and decentralized exchanges are taking Ethereum The network is pushed to the limit level.

Any transaction on the Ethereum blockchain (other than a simple Eth send) will interact with one or more smart contracts, which are often referred to as contract calls. Each transaction also requires a gas fee to be executed.

The number of Ethereum external contract calls has increased by more than 80% in 2020. On August 10 alone, the number of contract calls in a single day exceeded 900,000, a record high. That figure is three times the average of about 300,000 calls per day between late 2017 and early 2018, when ETH's price hit an all-time high of $1,382.

The DeFi protocol has developed into the largest Gas consumer on the Ethereum network, and Gas consumption is closely related to contract calls. According to the Eth Gas Station website, protocols like decentralized exchange Uniswap and exchange aggregator 1inch consume large amounts of gas fees on a daily basis.

According to Dune Analytics, some DeFi protocols are also seeing exponential growth in user numbers. For example, the number of unique users on decentralized exchange Uniswap increased by more than 75% in August, while DEX aggregator 1inch expanded its user base by 35%.

Data from Glassnode also shows that the number of internal contract calls on ethereum, a measure of the complexity of decentralized applications running on ethereum, is also growing rapidly. As decentralized application development progresses, smart contracts are assigned increasingly complex tasks, such as gathering liquidity for exchanging tokens on multiple exchanges for the best price.