Evaluating the impact of Ethereum L2s trying to ‘go to the moon’

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Ethereum layer 2s have been pulling off impressive transaction activity lately
Improving stats could have a significant impact on Ethereum too

ETH may still be a long way off from its historic all-time high, but Ethereum is hitting new highs on other fronts. The network’s layer 2 transactions touched new highs recently.

Ethereum layer 2s’ aggregate daily transaction count reportedly hit a new high of 12.2 million transactions. Note that this only accounts for data on layer 2 networks, and not on exchanges.

According to Growthepie, the Base network contributed the highest transaction activity in the last 24 hours. It averaged slightly over 3.6 million transactions, which was almost double the transaction count provided by Arbitrum One.

Source: Growthepie.xyz

The impressive layer 2 performance received a significant and noteworthy boost from Manta. The latter achieved over 1.31 million transactions during the same period.

In fact, its transactions have registered a spike since 5 August.

Are Ethereum’s layer 2s stealing the mainnet thunder?

The aforementioned findings also reveal something interesting about the Ethereum layer 2 landscape. Most of the layer 2 networks currently experiencing robust growth are relatively new. Older layer 2s such as Polygon and Optimism have been overtaken by the likes of Base and Manta in terms of transaction count.

Base was also the dominant Ethereum layer 2 network in terms of fees paid by users.

The relatively new and popular layer 2s have been gaining traction in transaction count and fees. In comparison, Ethereum mainnet transactions are noting an overall decline on a year to date basis.

Source: CryptoQuant

The mainnet’s transaction count peaked at slightly over 1.96 million transactions on 14 January. It had a count of 1.08 million transactions on 13 August.

We also drew comparisons between the Ethereum mainnet daily active addresses and its layer 2 active addresses. This comparison was based on historic highs for the last 12 months and the latest (13 August) stats.

Source: CryptoQuant

Ethereum mainnet’s highest active address count for the last 12 months was 1.009 million addresses on 13 September, 2023. Its highest figures in 2024, however, were just over 585,000 addresses on 22 June. It registered 303,268 active addresses on 13 August.

The aggregate number of active addresses for Ethereum layer 2s peaked at 2.52 million active addresses on 23 June this year. It had just over 1.54 million active addresses on 13 August.