Going into 2023, the cryptocurrency market seems to have shrugged off the bearish sentiment of a year since 2022. As investors remember, the awaited price correction has a significant reaction, which is shown through the on-chain activity in the Ethereum blockchain.
According to a data report from Analytex, the average gas price of Ethereum – calculated from the smallest denomination of Ether (ETH), gwei – increased by 29.27% in January 2023. The report compares gas prices from January to December 2022, noting an increase in user activity is a key indicator for the rise in the average gas price from 19.2 gwei to 24.82 gwei month-on-month.
The report also noted that the average number of unique active Ethereum wallets per day fell by around 10% to 387,475, the lowest figure in the past six months. Meanwhile, the average number of unique active smart contracts increased by 6.74%.
As shown above, another important metric measured includes daily Ethereum transaction data, which showed a slight decrease of 0.8% from December to January. The report notes that the average number of Ethereum transactions per day has decreased over the past eight months.
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Ethereum block statistics show that the average number of blocks mined per day has not changed, while the total block size per month has increased by 7%. After the Merger, the daily average block data has stabilized at around 0.01% per month. Ethereum’s monthly total block size for January was 17.24 GB, up 7.08% from December’s total of 16.1 GB.
The report highlights contrasting data metrics across the board. The number of transactions and unique active wallets is down since December. The Ethereum activity index also shows that the number of active smart contracts and the average gas cost price have increased.
Analytex suggests that this shows “the increasing interest of current blockchain users, as well as smart contract developers.”
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol saw an increase in the total value locked between different staking pools in January, according to a report from DappRadar. The market reached $74.6 billion in staked assets, an increase of 26% from December 2022.
The upcoming Ethereum upgrade in Shanghai is also driving staking in DeFi due to the opening of withdrawals from the Ethereum staking contract. Lido Finance replaced Maker DAO as the largest DeFi protocol in January, driven by the popularity of liquid staking derivative protocols.