The collective crypto market has neared $2.5 trillion. While Bitcoin continued to tread below $60,000, Ethereum has leading rallies for the altcoin pack. With it, the second-largest digital asset has broken many records after climbing $4,000 this week.
According to the latest estimates, activity on Ethereum has risen substantially over the past weeks. This was indicative that the on-chain economic flows has backed this rally in terms of its price.
Strong Fundamentals
For instance, the number of active addresses on the Ethereum network has closely mimicked its price action. According to the blockchain intelligence platform Glassnode, the figure climbed a record high of 7.94 million on the 9th of May and surpassed the previous high of 7.14 million that was registered on the 16th of January, 2018.
In terms of YTD, Ethereum’s active addresses has shot up by almost 90%.
As depicted by the above chart published by the data site, the blockchain saw a strong uptick across the myriad of metrics such as the total number of smart contract calls, Uniswap transactions, total transaction rate and USD settled in ETH transfers.
In addition, Glassnode also noted that the network has reached another on-chain peak for daily transaction counts, as the increased gas limit managed to accommodate a major leg up in maximum transaction throughput.
This week alone, the Ethereum network saw an ATH of 1.63 million transactions which represented more than a 22% rise over the previous peak, set just before the 2017 macro top. Hence, the strong fundamentals have been crucial in driving the crypto-assets bull market.
Ethereum [ETH] Flows From CEFI to DeFi
Ether balances on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have dropped to almost a two-year low. According to the analytics platform, these centralized platforms now hold about 13.38 million Ether, which happens to be a little over 11% of the total supply of the token.
This suggests two things:
Firstly, basic supply-demand. If the market sees a reduction in supply relative to its demand, the price of the cryptocurrency is bound to go up, thus projecting bullishness.
Secondly, decrease exchange balances also signify that the long-term investors are moving their coins into secure storage or locking up in a bid to amass higher yields via decentralized finance [DeFi] protocols or staking.