The trading activity of Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks continues to grow, independent of ETH prices, with the entire ecosystem's transaction volume nearing 1.1 billion per month.
According to data from blockchain analytics platform growthepie, there is a clear relationship between market sentiment and actual network usage, with both currently moving in opposite directions.
The recent transaction count dashboard shows that, excluding system transactions and only counting user or smart contract executions, Base has led all networks with 316 million transactions in the past 30 days, a year-on-year increase of 43%. Polygon PoS recorded 264 million transactions, the highest year-on-year growth rate among major networks at 161%. Arbitrum One processed 109 million transactions, an 88% increase year-on-year. The Ethereum mainnet contributed 62 million transactions, despite being the layer with the highest transaction costs, it still achieved a year-on-year growth rate of 64%. The growthepie chart indicates that the overall ecosystem's transaction volume has significantly risen from nearly zero levels at the end of 2022, showing a steep and stable growth momentum.
Layer 2 Ecosystem Plays a Key Role
The 62 million transactions on the Ethereum mainnet are the least among major networks, which is a result of the Ethereum scaling roadmap's design. The existence of Layer 2 networks is intended to absorb transaction volumes that would otherwise lead to congestion and high costs on the base layer, and the data from growthepie validates the effectiveness of this design. Base alone processed over five times the transaction volume of the Ethereum mainnet, while the total L2 transaction volume tracked far exceeds the contributions from L1.
It is noteworthy that the significance of year-on-year comparisons spans a period of significant weakness in ETH prices, which currently hover around $2,000.
Throughout the measurement period, the asset's trading price remained well below its historical peak, yet no major network showed a year-on-year decline in transaction volume. OP mainnet saw a year-on-year growth of 138%. World Chain experienced a 109% increase. The newly added Unichain displayed a staggering 298% year-on-year growth. Ink recorded 267%. The usage trends within the ecosystem are broad and not concentrated on one or two exceptions.
What the Data Reveals
Transaction counts are a useful but not comprehensive metric for assessing network health. A high transaction count does not distinguish between high-value activities and low-value or automated interactions. Smart contract executions initiated by bots, arbitrage systems, or automated protocols are included in the total, alongside activities genuinely driven by users. The growthepie methodology excludes system transactions, eliminating the most obvious sources of artificial inflation, but the remaining figures still require cautious interpretation.