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Unexpected Ethereum Statistics Relevant After the Merge
HomeUnexpected Ethereum Statistics Relevant After the Merge

Unexpected Ethereum Statistics Relevant After the Merge

Darko Jacimovic
Darko Jacimovic
February 17th, 2023
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If you are a crypto enthusiast, you must’ve heard about the merger of Ethereum’s Mainnet with the proof-of-stake Beacon Chain. But does this change anything for you, and if it does, what will be different? Today’s article on Ethereum statistics will shed some light on the matter and help you understand how the Ethereum network will evolve in the future.

Before we get started, let’s get one thing out of the way. Mining Ether is no longer an option. The only way to earn Ether in a proof-of-stake system is through validation, which is the main difference you need to be aware of from the get-go. To learn more about this change's impact on the Ethereum network, feel free to check the statistics below.

Top 10 Ethereum Statistics and Facts

  • At this moment in time, 1 ETH is worth $1,342.34.

  • The total number of Ethereum tokens in circulation is 122,373,863.

  • There are 16,958,461 unique active ETH users as of the third quarter of 2022.

  • Ethereum’s market capitalization currently exceeds $169 billion.

  • The current transaction volume of Ethereum is 1.039 million transactions per day.

  • 117,192 smart contracts were deployed on the Ethereum blockchain in 2022.

  • 3,978,224 unique Ethereum addresses hold at least 0.1 ETH.

  • The average Ethereum whale is worth $12,114,257.

  • The highest Ethereum hash rate of all time was 1.32 PH/s, reached on June 04, 2022.

  • ETH’s highest price ever was $4,867.24, reached on November 12, 2021.

General Ethereum Stats

The total number of Ethereum tokens in circulation is 122,373,863.

During the initial crowdfunding of Ethereum in 2014, there were only 72 million ETH tokens. Most of them, or 83%, were sold at a rate of 2,000 ETH for 1 BTC. According to some estimations, the network raised close to $18 million in BTC for the sale of 60 million ETH. When Ethereum went live in 2015, with every block mined, five new ETH tokens were minted. This reward kept reducing over time until mid-September 2022, when the reward for mining Ethereum was completely removed.

(Capital, Coin Market Cap)

At this moment in time, 1 ETH is worth $1,342.34.

Moreover, the stats show that the ETH cost varied between $1,324.70 and $1,358.40 in the past 24 hours. With this price, Ether is the fourth most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, below Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), which currently stands at $19,575.09, Bitcoin (BTC), which is $19,568.21; and PAX Gold (PAXG), currently worth $1,652.84, per unit. Furthermore, according to the stats, the average time that Ether tokens are held is 1.8 years. In comparison, Bitcoins are held almost twice that time, or 3.5 years on average.

(Coindesk)

The current transaction volume of Ethereum is 1.039 million transactions per day.

The stats further reveal that the number of Ethereum transactions per day has decreased significantly, or by 17.61%, compared to its transaction volume in 2021. Exactly one year before the day of writing this article, Ethereum’s 24H transaction volume was 1.261 million transactions. In comparison, the number of Bitcoin transactions per day is considerably lower and currently stands at 264,486. Finally, according to the data, the average Ethereum transaction fee is $0.68.

(Y Charts)

Ethereum’s market capitalization currently exceeds $169 billion.

Ethereum is the world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, only topped by Bitcoin, whose market cap is over $373 billion. Furthermore, even though Ethereum’s transaction volume is much larger than Bitcoins, its trade volume is much less valuable. The 24H trade volume of ETH, at the moment of writing, is just over $11 billion, while BTC’s is $24.5 billion. However, neither of these two is the number one crypto in terms of trade volume. Instead, the cryptocurrency with the highest 24H trade volume is Tether, with a volume of $33.5 billion.

(Coin Market Cap)

Ethereum Usage Statistics

Ethereum’s average block time is now constantly at around 12 seconds.

The average ETH transaction time has varied between 12.77 seconds and 12.04 seconds per block ever since the network switched to a proof-of-state protocol on September 15, 2022. Before that, the average transaction time was closer to 14 seconds per block. While this is not a huge improvement, and Ethereum is still behind blockchain rivals Solana and Avalanche, it is still much faster than Bitcoin’s average transaction speed. Bitcoin is a much older network that is still operating with a proof-of-work protocol and has an average block time of 10 minutes.

(Coindesk, Y Charts)

The total number of Ethereum transactions in the second quarter of 2022 is 99.64 million.

The number of ETH transactions has decreased by 5.96% in Q2, compared to the 105.58 million transactions done in the first quarter. However, the total number of smart contracts created has seen a much more significant slump of 54.6%, from 1.45 million in the first to 937,845 smart contracts created in the second quarter of 2022. Finally, the average number of daily active addresses has also seen a decline between these two quarters, from 392,901 in Q1 to 346,758 in Q2, indicating an 11.74% drop.

(Dune)

117,192 smart contracts were deployed on the Ethereum blockchain in 2022.

In comparison, Ethereum stats reveal that the total number of smart contracts deployed between 2015 and 2021 was 205,827. According to these figures, the 117,192 contracts verified solely in 2022 account for 36% of all smart contracts ever verified on the blockchain. Furthermore, the average number of smart contracts verified per month reached 17,375 in the third quarter of 2022, which is a 160% increase from Q3 in 2021. Lastly, the number of dapps deployed on the Ethereum network has reached new heights as well. There are already over 12,000 on the blockchain, and their number is rapidly growing.

(Alchemy)

According to Ethereum pool stats, Ethermine is the biggest Ethereum mining pool, with a 27.2% market share.

However, since the switch to proof-of-stake, the Ethermine mining pool has changed to withdraw-only mode, and it is no longer possible to mine on it. The stats from just before the switch reveal that F2Pool had the second-largest mining market share of 17.58%, while Sparkpool was in third place with a share of 16.12 %. Mining for other cryptocurrencies is still possible on F2Pool, while Sparkpool has stopped providing its services to new users. Finally, Nanopool was the fourth largest Ethereum mining pool with an 11.91% market share, and its website is still up and running.

(Mining Pools)

Ethereum Owners Statistics

There are 16,958,461 unique active Ethereum users as of the third quarter of 2022.

The above figure indicates a 36% growth compared to the number of users from the second quarter of the year, when there were only 12,435,708 unique active users of Ethereum. Additionally, the stats reveal that this is the first time that their number has increased, rather than declined, since the fourth quarter of 2021. The fact that the ETH price dropped under $900 in Q2 might explain the sudden surge in interest in Ethereum among investors.

(Crypto Slate)

The average Ethereum whale is worth $12,114,257.

The Ether statistics on the top 5,000 largest Ethereum wallets show that the average Ethereum whale holds on 7,476 ETH, 6 tokens, and 1 NFT. Moreover, the top 100 richest Ethereum holders have an average of 16,441 ETH, which translates to close to $25 million. Namely, with around 12,940,565 Ether, the Eth2 Deposit contract is currently the largest ETH wallet.

Furthermore, the top 100 Ether holders currently account for $26 million of the total buying and $12 million of the total selling volume of ETH. Lastly, their most traded token is Tokenize (TKX) and their most widely held token is Uniswap (UNI).

(Whale Stats)

3,978,224 unique Ethereum addresses hold at least 0.1 ETH.

ETH statistics indicate a 10% increase in the number of users who own at least one 0.1 ETH compared to 3,638,204 addresses that held at least this amount in 2021. Moreover, the growth of such users is even more significant, at 50%, when compared to the 2,654,853 addresses that held at least 0.1 ETH in 2020. On the other hand, only 1,199 users own more than 10,000 ETH, which is the highest count of addresses with that high amount of Ether in the past four months.

(Decrypt, Finance Magnates)

Ethereum All-Time Highs

Ethereum's highest price ever was $4,867.24, reached on November 12, 2021.

The sale of the world’s most expensive NFT and the Berlin update, which considerably reduced the ETH gas prices, are two of the main factors that drove the price of Ether to new heights in 2021. Since then, Ether’s cost has been on a declining trend and is more than three times cheaper. Furthermore, stats show that Ethereum reached its highest transaction volume of all time on May 9, 2021, with 1.717 million transactions in 24 hours. The stats further reveal Ethereum’s all-time high market cap is $571.67 billion, reached on November 9, 2021, and its highest number of daily active users is 1.067 million, reached on July 26, 2022.

(Coindesk, Y Charts, Global Data)

The average number of Ethereum SDKs downloads per week reached 1,536,548 in Q3 of 2022.

Ether.js was the more popular option, with 948,941 weekly downloads, while Web3.js was downloaded 587,567 times per week, on average. Even though the Ether prices are down, developer activity is the highest in Ethereum’s history. Stats from 2021 show that Ethereum libraries were being downloaded 552,272 times per week in the third quarter of 2021, indicating an incredible 178% year-over-year growth. A year before that, in 2020, the average weekly downloads number of Ethereum SDKs was almost three times smaller, at 325,056.

(Alchemy)

Ethereum’s total energy consumption reached an all-time high in February 2022, with just under 94 TWh/yr.

In the summer of 2022, Ethereum’s energy consumption dropped to 60 TWh/yr and caused a carbon emission of 33 MT/yr. It wasn’t until the Ethereum merge in September 2022, when the network switched to a proof-of-stake protocol, that the energy consumption really went down. Since the switch, Ethereum’s annualized electricity consumption is reduced by 99.988 %, from 22,900,320 MWh to 2,601 MWh. Additionally, with the new protocol, Ethereum’s carbon footprint has declined by 99.992 %, from 11,016,000 tonnes to 870 tonnes of CO2e,

(Ethereum)

The highest Ethereum hash rate of all time was 1.32 PH/s, reached on June 04, 2022.

Hash rates have been down since Ethereum’s switch to proof-of-stake, and the current hash rate is 390.45 MH/s. Interestingly, Ethereum mining stats show that Ethereum Classic’s (ETC) hash rate reached its all-time high just a few days before the switch. On September 4, 2022, it went up to 48.82 TH/s, indicating that miners wanted to make the most of the last days remaining and collect the last of the rewards. For some reason, the same behavior was not seen among ETH miners, as the Ethereum hash rate on September 5 was 926.02 TH/s, far away from the all-time high.

(Coin Warz, Bitcoin)

FAQs on Ethereum Statistics

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Conclusion

Even though it hasn’t been too long since the merger, some trends are already indicating considerable differences in the Ethereum network. Most significantly, the energy consumption levels and CO2 emissions are infinitely smaller than when Ethereum was using a proof-of-work protocol, which is a positive change in our books.

Additionally, the Ether transactions are faster than ever, though transaction speed was never much of an issue on the Ethereum blockchain, to begin with. The biggest benefit of the switch has to be the increased development activity which is reaching sky-high levels. Instead of only focusing on mining, the PoS system inspires a more creative approach to the blockchain which we hope will continue in the future.

Sources:

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Contributors

Darko Jacimovic
Writer
With over six years of writing experience, Darko is a prolific writer in multiple industries including, but not limited to, digital marketing, SEO, finance, and technology. Acquiring a BA in English pushed him to pursue his lifelong dream to conquer the internet and take over the SERPs with high-quality content. While looking for his next travel destination, Darko developed impeccable research skills that helped him craft some of the most popular stats pages on the World Wide Web.