Ethereum L2 ecosystem processes a record 12.4M transactions in a day

The growth has been primarily driven by memecoin mania on the Coinbase L2 blockchain Base.

Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling ecosystem has just reached a new daily transaction all-time high.

According to data from Growthepie, an Ethereum layer-2 block space analytics platform, aggregated daily transactions across the scaling ecosystem hit a record 12.42 million on Aug. 12. 

Leon Waidmann, head of research at the Onchain Foundation, commented on the milestone in a post on X on Aug. 13, stating that “scalability is improving rapidly” and “user activity is at its peak.

According to the platform, the L2 ecosystem has seen a 140% increase in daily transactions since the beginning of 2024. 

Growthepie only counts transactions that are executed by users or smart contracts and does not include system transactions.

The growth has been primarily driven by the Coinbase L2 blockchain Base, which saw transactions surge to a peak of more than 4 million in late July. 

Base blockchain metrics platform Basescan confirms the data reporting that daily transactions on the network have surged 700% over the past six months.

According to a Cointelegraph report earlier this year, the explosive growth for Base has been driven by memecoin mania as token minters flocked to lower-cost and higher throughput chains to create memecoins. 

Scaling industry metrics platform L2beat reports that overall throughput has also surged recently, with average TPS (transactions per second) doubling over the past two months as the number of scaling platforms has increased.

Related: Vitalik Buterin unveils plan to solve cross-chain L2 interoperability

Growthepie also reported that layer-2 networks now have more stablecoins than Solana and Binance Chain combined. It noted 150% more stablecoins on L2s than Solana and 94% more than BNB Smart Chain. 

Meanwhile, layer-1 daily transactions on Ethereum have been relatively stable, hovering around the 1.1 million level for most of this year, according to Etherscan.

Additionally, average gas fees on L1 Ethereum have fallen to yearly lows. This enabled stablecoin issuer Tether to mint 1 billion Tether (USDT) for just 53 cents on Aug. 13, according to blockchain intelligence platform Arkham.

Magazine: Memecoins: Betrayal of crypto’s ideals… or its true purpose?