A plethora of projects is building on Ethereum [ETH]. The network is home to several layer-2 projects. It seems like the attention of the industry was veering toward these projects as opposed to ETH. Over the weekend, Optimism’s daily transaction count hit an all-time high of nearly 700,000. This is reportedly a 700 percent surge since September 2022.
Arbitrum also mirrored this notion. Both these projects together flipped Ethereum in terms of transaction volume. According to the graph, Ethereum handled more than 1.06 million transactions on January 10 while Arbitrum and Optimism together processed over 1.12 million.
As seen in the chart, Optimism, as well as Arbitrum, have witnessed a persistent increase since September 2022. It should be noted that both these networks account for 80 percent of the entire layer-2 ecosystem.
Therefore, the above data signifies the emergence of layer-2 networks over Ethereum.
Ethereum’s average fee stays grounded for two straight months
Ethereum’s high gas fees had been a major drawback for the network. The unreasonable fees often prevented traders and builders from carrying out transactions that were pertinent. However, Santiment reports that the average transaction fee of ETH has been below $2 for two months now.
Despite this, the transaction volume of layer-2 networks was seen flourishing.
Santiment also believes that the increased fees could have been averting the asset from rising. Elaborating on the same, the on-chain analytics firm wrote,
“Ethereum may still have a long way to recover back to its $4,858 #AllTimeHigh on Nov 10, 2021. $ETH got hit, in part, due to egregious $60+ average fees then. But now at under $2 per transaction, ease of utility could allow a continued gradual rebound.”
Currently, Ethereum is 72.74 percent below its all-time high. At press time, ETH was trading for $1,334.71 with a dainty price change of 0.52 percent.