Jun 6, 2024 at 06:24The number of daily active users in the Ethereum ecosystem and its top layer 2 networks has surged in recent years, with analysts at VanEck forecasting continued growth.
Since 2020, the daily active users of Ethereum and its scaling solutions, including Arbitrum and Polygon, have nearly increased ninefold. Data from Bitwise, a crypto ETF issuer, showed that in Q1 2020, the Ethereum ecosystem averaged more than 250,000 daily active users, predominantly from Ethereum’s layer-1 mainnet.
By the first quarter of 2024, this number soared to approximately 2.25 million daily users, including new layer-2 networks like Optimism, Base, and zkSync. This shift has reduced Ethereum’s share of daily active users.
On June 4, Ethereum’s mainnet had 378,000 active users, while Polygon had 1.3 million, and the combined total for the other four L2s was about 1.5 million. Optimism launched in late 2021, with zkSync and Base becoming publicly accessible in 2023.
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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin supports the use of layer-2 solutions to scale the main blockchain, likening them to the sharding concept in the old Eth 2 plan. He believes L2s will encourage growth within various “subcultures” in the Ethereum ecosystem.
VanEck Forecasts Ethereum Growth
Crypto ETF issuer VanEck has increased its price target for Ethereum, predicting the cryptocurrency could reach $22,000 by 2030. In a June 5 blog post, VanEck’s head of digital assets research, Matthew Sigel, and his colleagues, highlighted that Ethereum’s revenue per user surpasses most Web2 businesses. They expect its popularity to grow among traditional financial market participants and Big Tech.
The analysts noted that the approval of spot ether ETFs for trading on U.S. stock exchanges is imminent, which would enable financial advisors and institutional investors to hold Ether and benefit from the advantages of ETFs. They project a 2030 valuation for ETH based on an estimated $66 billion in free cash flows generated by Ethereum.
Despite lower user numbers, Ethereum still generates three times more in fees than the combined top layer 2 networks and Solana, according to Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams. He called this a “modern miracle,” emphasizing that L2s benefit from Ethereum’s security by paying fees to settle transactions on the main chain.
Currently, Ether is priced at $3,862, a 1.3% increase over the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The launch of spot Ether ETFs is anticipated to drive Ether’s price to a new all-time high, although some caution that inflows into these new crypto ETFs might be lower than those for Bitcoin ETFs.
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