Ethereum transaction volume surpassed $24 billion

High Ethereum GAS prices fail to halt the DeFi ecosystems momentum

Our August 2020 overview of the dapp ecosystem covers a total of seven blockchains. Not only the three main dapp blockchains – Ethereum, TRON, and EOS are included, but also Steem, Hive, ThunderCore, and WAX. 

Within this review, we are going to analyze daily active wallets, total value locked, transaction volumes, and native protocols token price changes.

Table of contents

  • Key takeaways
  • Ethereum
  • TRON
  • EOS
  • The best of the rest
  • Conclusions

Key takeaways

  • High Ethereum gas prices have not affected the DeFi ecosystem yet. $24 billion in transaction volume generated in August. More than $7 billion total value locked at the end of August.
  • Ethereum transaction volumes account for 94% of total transaction volumes in August. The protocol increased its share by 2%.
  • TRON showed positive development in all metrics. Daily active wallets and transaction volumes reached their best results in 2020.
  • EOS spiked in all metrics. DeFi and DEX dapps were behind the sustained growth.
  • Other protocols such as Hive and WAX increased steadily, ThunderCore exploded and reached 25,000 active wallets daily.

Ethereum

Ethereum is still facing contradictory results. High Ethereum gas prices decreased the number of active wallets drastically in almost all categories. 

On the other hand, DeFi and DEX dapps witnessed different activity trends. Although a transaction currently costs more than $50 at the time of writing, it hasn’t slowed down DeFi enthusiasts. The madness surrounding the DeFi ecosystem seems to be increasing all the main metrics: DAUWs, TVL, and transaction volumes.

The Ethereum token price also faced a significant increase. At the end of August, the price surged to $420. This is the highest value in 2020 so far and doesn’t seem to be stopping. Within a few days of September, the price already surpassed the $470 level.

DeFi and DEX dapps compensated the losses in other categories

On average the number of daily active wallets decreased by 6% in August. The biggest decrease was in the Gambling & High-risk category. Daily activity dropped by more than 2x from 6,700 to 2,393 active wallets.

Games & Marketplaces also followed suit. DAUWs decreased by 33% from 1,500 to 1,000 daily active wallets. Interestingly, daily activity was 10 times lower in August than at the beginning of 2020.

On average DeFi and DEX active wallets grew by 16% month-on-month. The biggest contributor was Uniswap V2, where daily active wallets grew from around 10,000 to more than 14,000.

TVL surpassed $7 billion 

Similarly to daily active wallets, the value of the Ethereum blockchain was mainly generated by DeFi and DEX dapps. According to the DappRadar DeFi page, the total value locked increased by $3.61 billion and reached $7.5 billion by the end of August.

Ethereum

aTVL – Adjusted TVL

There are a couple of reasons behind the growth. First of all, growth is partly driven by the increase in the token price. $1.5 billion or 42% of the growth is generated by the DeFi token price bubble

The rest of the increase was driven by increased interest in lending and liquidity protocols such as Aave, Uniswap, and Curve. Recently these protocols surpassed the $1 billion line in total value locked.

Transaction Volume surpassed 24 Billion USD

Record-high figures could be spotted in transaction volumes too. Transaction volumes almost doubled in August and surpassed the $24 billion line. Of course, DeFi and DEX dapps played a vital role there. Both grew by $9 billion in August.

Uniswap v2 grew by $3.8 billion reaching $5.4 billion in August. Curve also showed incredible results increasing value by $3.3 billion and reaching $4.9 billion in August.

Last but not least was lending protocol Aave increasing transaction volumes by $2.1 billion and reaching $3.5 billion in August.

TRON

TRON has always been a fascinating protocol especially in 2020 due to two factors. First of all, the release of version 4.0. Secondly, the attempts to create a DeFi ecosystem on the TRON network. Both actions have had an effect on three main elements: Daily active wallets, transaction volumes, and the value of the TRX token.

The value of Tron’s native token TRX had faced a plunge to $0.00853 in March 2020. In the last couple of months, the price steadily increased and reached its highest value in 2020 of $0.034.

High-risk dapps boom; DeFi grew by 118%

Daily active wallets reached an all-time high in August by surpassing 100,000 active wallets. All categories on TRON have performed very well. Especially high-risk dapps.

Gambling & High-Risk has increased activity by 161% in August compared to July 2020. 

While gambling always accounted for the biggest category on TRON, High-Risk has now taken over the leadership position. On average the category generated 50,000 daily active wallets in August. 

The dapps behind such tremendous growth were Tron supernode and TRONCHAIN. These two dapps generated around 10,000 and 6,000 daily active wallets respectively in August.

Since the time TRON entered the DeFi space an exponential increase in daily activity month on month has been observed. In August the DeFi category faced an increase of 118%. The biggest contributor was the newly launched JustSwap

JustSwap is the first automated market maker exchange on TRON. Similar in almost all ways to the features on Uniswap, it allows users to swap TRON tokens, such as TRX, USDJ, WIN, etc, as well as locking tokens into liquidity pools.

Transaction volume surpassed $300 million

TRON’s Transaction volume surpassed $300 million in August 2020. The volume has increased by 95% compared to July 2020.

The biggest contributors were High-Risk dapps. They grew by $110 million month-on-month and surpassed $130 million in value. Bank of TRON and 200TRON made their mark in the category. They generated $38 and $35 million respectively.

Growth of $48 million could be spotted in the DEX category with the vast majority of the growth generated by JustSwap.

Within the first month of existence, JustSwap generated $43 million in transaction volume and was responsible for more than half of the volume generated in the TRON DEX category.

EOS

In August, we witnessed steadily increasing activity on EOS. Different from other months, on average, daily active wallets increased by 9%. While the high-risk and gambling categories decreased again. But unlike previous months new DeFi dapps compensated the loss.

The EOS token price surged too by 7%. At the end of August, it reached $3.26. As reported before, after the events of Black Thursday in Mid-March the price was around $2.4.

Ethereum

Increasing activity in the EOS DeFi ecosystem

In August, daily active wallets grew by 9%. The average active wallet amount increased from 17,353 to 18,934.  Although the biggest contributors to the EOS blockchain are the games and gambling categories, the best performance is seen in DEX and DeFi categories. 

DEX surpassed 1,200 active wallets, while the DeFi category reached around 1,200 active wallets.

Newdex represents almost 100% of the DEX category activity. The number of active wallets grew by 70% month-on-month. 

The biggest contributor to the DeFi category was a new dapp DeFibox. The dapp is similar to the Ethereum liquidity protocol Uniswap. DeFibox peaked in August and surpassed 700 active wallets. 

On the other hand, the Games & Marketplace category activity slightly decreased. The daily active wallet number declined from 9,000 to 8,000 daily.

Ethereum

Transaction volume surpassed $1 billion in August

Transaction volumes exploded back in August. The biggest contributors were the DEX and DeFi category

The number one contributor was Newdex that generated almost $800 million or 80% of the total transaction volume.

Another DeFi dapp that surged impressively was the before mentioned DeFibox. Transaction volumes grew by 530% and surpassed $34 million in August.

Ethereum

The best of the rest

In August, ThunderCore’s daily active wallets exploded and reached an all-time high. The number of active wallets grew from 13,600 to 25,000. The dapps behind this tremendous growth were: TT mining and Galaxy Blocks.

The TT mining dapp is a minimalist dapp that features very few features and invites users to buy TT and participate in festivals. Of course, high return rates are promised for such contributions.

On average the dapp generated more than 13,000 active wallets daily and was responsible for more than 53% of the blockchains activity.

Another major contributor was the dapp game Galaxy Blocks. The dapp tripled its active wallets during August and surpassed the 700 level. 

Ethereum

Previously the battle occurring between Hive and Steem after the hard fork was discussed a lot. It is quite obvious now, that Hive not only won the fight but is also presenting stable growth in August. The dapp that helped to deliver great results was Splinterlands.

The WAX protocol performed quite well in August. The daily active wallets peaked due to the newly presented marketplace dapp AtomicMarket that already generates 500 unique active wallets daily.

Conclusions

Two trends could be spotted across all blockchains. DeFi ecosystem growth and increasing interest in High-Risk dapps.

By no surprise, the biggest portion of DeFi activity is generated in Ethereum. Accounting for around $23 billion in transaction volume. The total value locked increased significantly too and surpassed $7 billion. 

While other metrics surge, we spot a decrease in daily active wallets. This is due to high Ethereum gas prices.

TRON demonstrated growth in all main metrics. Both daily active wallets and transaction volumes reached their highest value of 2020. TRX also faced an increase in August. The vast majority of activity was within the High-Risk category.

The EOS blockchain witnessed increased activity too. The biggest spikes were seen in the DEX and DeFi categories. This proves that EOS’s attempt to join the DeFi ecosystem is likely to be a successful one.

The best of the rest title in August 2020 goes to the ThunderCore protocol. The activity exploded due to the airdrop dapp TT mining.

As always we will continue to monitor developments. Make sure you bookmark the new DappRadar DeFi page and sign up to our newsletter below to get updates direct to your inbox. 

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