Ethereum Hits Address Milestone But Activity and dApp Usage Down

Latest data indicates that Ethereum has reached a milestone in terms of unique addresses surpassing 50 million. While this news is a good sign for growth the actual number of active addresses has declined quite substantially.

50 Million Ethereum Addresses

Metrics from etherscan indicates that Ethereum crossed 50 million addresses over the weekend. During its peak in early January Ethereum recorded the highest increase of unique addresses added per day 352,888 on the fourth. Conversely its lowest number was 41 on August 6, 2015. So even during a massive bear market unique Ethereum addresses were still being made and growing.

Further research carried out by The Block indicates that active addresses are falling and have dropped almost 70% since their peak. Citing figures from Coinmetrics, the peak of activity for Ethereum addresses was on January 16, 2018 at 719,093. It defines activity as “the number of unique sending and receiving addresses participating in transactions on the given day.” This had now fallen to 232,085 by December 15. The percentage of active addresses out of all Ethereum addresses is currently 0.46%, down from around 3.5% seen in January.

Hashrate and dApp Usage Down

Since mid-November Ethereum hashrate has also plunged and it is now back to the same levels witnessed during peak times at the beginning of the year.

The demand for dApps and ERC20 tokens has fallen with prices this year so these figures are not surprising. According to dappradar daily users of ETH dApps has been in steep decline since mid-October. The current number of users is 7,434 compared to around 17,000 just two months ago. Early July saw the lowest figure this year at 4,215.

The continued liquidation of Ethereum from ICO projects is keeping prices on the floor. According to recent figures 416,000 ETH has been sold in the past month leading to further slide in prices.

Ethereum Market in Pain

At the time of writing Ethereum was trading at $85, down a whopping 94% since its all-time high of just over $1,400 in January. Market cap has dropped below $10 billion for the first time since May 2017. This has allowed Ripple’s XRP to surpass it and take and hold second spot with a market cap of just under $12 billion.

The lowest point for Ethereum this year was on December 15 when it fell to $82.83, a price not seen for over 18 months. Over the past seven days Ethereum has fallen 9.5% and looking back over the past month it has dumped over 50% of its value.

There are a number of improvements slated for the project which will do wonders for its scalability which is the main thing holding back adoption at the moment. Once these are rolled out and the bears start to go into hibernation Ethereum will be back on the up again.

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