The leading smart contract platform, Ethereum (ETH), has seen its circulating supply retract to a new low following the merge. Approximately $300 million worth of 86,219 ETH was removed from circulation over the past month, according to the price at the time of writing.
New Addresses on ETH
The decrease in Ethereum’s circulating supply suggests a rise in demand and usage of the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network, leading to an increased burn rate. It was reported that the number of new daily addresses created on the Ethereum network recently exceeded 116,000, the highest level since the beginning of the year.
This could indicate an uptick in user activity on the Layer1 network. At the time of writing, the circulating supply of ETH reached 120.07 million, the lowest in 548 days since the network’s transition known popularly as “The Merge” from Proof-of-Work (PoW). An assessment related to Ethereum’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem revealed an increase in the total value locked (TVL) last month.
Ethereum On-Chain Data
According to DefiLlama’s data, Ethereum’s TVL was $51 billion at the time of writing, showing a 21% increase over 30 days. During the same period, the TVL of the chain’s leading protocol, Lido Finance, increased by 27%. Amidst the recent rise in the altcoin market, Ethereum saw an increase in decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volumes last month. According to Artemis’ data, the daily trading volume among DEXs hosted on Ethereum surged by 161% in the last 30 days.
The non-fungible token (NFT) sector in the cryptocurrency network also experienced growth last month. Data from CryptoSlam showed that NFT sales volume increased by 17% in the last 30 days, reaching $617 million. This increase in transaction volume occurred despite a 57% decrease in the number of completed NFT sales transactions during the same period. As the cryptocurrency market significantly overheated and the crypto fear and greed index pointed to a marked increase in greed sentiment, ETH sales also increased. This led to a rise in ETH’s exchange reserves. According to CryptoQuant’s data, ETH’s exchange reserve was 14.1 million, the highest level of the past month.
