Ethereum Value Settled Surged to $536 Billion in Q3

Ethereum’s transaction value settled for July to September this year was a whopping $536.5 billion. This represents an increase of 398% from the same period in 2020. That is not the only impressive statistic to emerge from the world’s largest smart contract platform’s third quarterly results.

The total transaction fees paid from users to miners increased 511% year on year, which was good news for miners but not so much for those using the network. Network revenue for the period was a whopping $1.96 billion, up from just $321 million for Q3, 2020.

The report also noted that 68% of these fees had been burned following the deployment of EIP-1559 in August. At the time of writing, more than 710,600 ETH had been burnt worth an estimated $3 billion at current prices. Late last week, Ethereum had its first Beacon Chain upgrade called Altair.

Declining Issuance

Ethereum’s issuance rate has also fallen by 29%. The report stated that the rate of expansion of the ETH supply over the period fell from 1.11% in Q3 2020 to 0.79% in Q3 2021. The Ultrasound.Money tracker currently reports an inflation rate of 2.1% per year. This is expected to fall to a deflationary -2% per year once “the merge” takes place and the network has switched to proof-of-stake.

The number of daily active addresses increased by 24% from the same period last year to 457,402. The hash rate has also climbed by 180% from Q3, 2020. They are currently near record highs, with an average daily hash rate of 785 TH/s (terahashes per second).

The Ethereum ecosystem has also grown considerably over the period, especially for DeFi and NFTs. Total value locked in DeFi surged 1,242% year on year, and decentralized exchange volumes grew by 242% for the period.

Stablecoin issuance also jumped 405% in Q3 compared to the same period last year. It reported that the amount of Bitcoin tokenized on Ethereum has climbed 133% from 123,500 in Q3 2020 to 288,234 in the same period this year.

Ethereum Cools From ATH

Ethereum prices are currently cooling off slightly after hitting a new high of $4,467 on Oct. 29. ETH is currently trading down 3.2% on the day at $4,300, according to CoinGecko.

The asset has made 1,000% gains over the past 12 months – this time last year, ETH was changing hands for just under $400.