Key Points
- Ethereum’s Layer 2 scaling ecosystem reached a new all-time high of 12.42 million daily transactions on August 12, 2024, marking a 140% increase since the beginning of the year.
- The growth is primarily driven by memecoin activity on Coinbase’s Layer 2 blockchain, Base, which saw a 700% surge in daily transactions over the past six months.
In a significant milestone for blockchain scalability, Ethereum’s Layer 2 (L2) ecosystem has set a new record with 12.42 million daily transactions, according to data from Growthepie, an Ethereum L2 analytics platform. This achievement, recorded on August 12, 2024, represents a 140% increase in daily transactions since the start of the year.
Leon Waidmann, head of research at the Onchain Foundation, highlighted the importance of this development in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on August 13. Waidmann noted that “scalability is improving rapidly” and “user activity is at its peak,” suggesting that Ethereum’s growth potential is stronger than ever.
The Coinbase L2 blockchain Base has primarily fueled the surge in L2 activity. Transactions on Base peaked at more than 4 million in late July, with Basescan, a blockchain metrics platform, confirming a staggering 700% increase in daily transactions over the past six months.
This explosive growth on Base has mainly been attributed to the ongoing memecoin mania. Token minters have flocked to lower-cost and higher throughput chains like Base to create memecoins, taking advantage of the reduced fees and increased transaction speeds offered by L2 solutions.
The broader L2 ecosystem has also seen significant improvements in overall throughput. L2beat, a scaling industry metrics platform, reports that the average transactions per second (TPS) has doubled over the past two months as the number of scaling platforms has increased.
In addition to transaction volumes, the L2 ecosystem is gaining ground regarding stablecoin adoption. Growthepie reported that L2 networks now host more stablecoins than Solana and Binance Chain combined, with 150% more stablecoins than Solana and 94% more than BNB Smart Chain.
While L2 solutions are experiencing rapid growth, the Ethereum mainnet (Layer 1) has maintained relatively stable daily transaction volumes, hovering around 1.1 million for most of 2024, according to Etherscan. Interestingly, average gas fees on L1 Ethereum have fallen to yearly lows, enabling stablecoin issuer Tether to mint 1 billion USDT for just 53 cents on August 13, as reported by blockchain intelligence platform Arkham.
The record-breaking performance of Ethereum’s L2 ecosystem underscores the growing importance of scalability solutions in the blockchain space. As user activity continues to increase and new use cases emerge, L2 platforms are proving crucial in addressing the scalability challenges major blockchain networks like Ethereum face.
