Daily Ethereum transactions hit a new historical high amid DeFi boom

Daily transactions on the Ethereum blockchain have just recorded a new all-time high amid the general surge of congestion on the network.

On Sept. 17, the amount of daily transactions on the Ethereum network amounted to 1,406,000, according to data from major Ethereum browser Etherscan. This is the highest number of daily transactions ever recorded on the Ethereum network.

According to Etherscan, the previous all-time high was on Jan. 4, 2018, reaching about 1,350,000 transactions on the day.

Ethereum daily transactions chart. Source: Etherscan

The new historical high of daily Ethereum transactions comes amid the ongoing boom in decentralized finance, or DeFi, applications. The DeFi industry has been growing massively in 2020, with the total value locked in the market hitting $9 billion in August 2020. Amid the apparent DeFi hype, a number of major global exchanges like Binance and OKEx have been rushing to list multiple DeFi tokens.

As most DeFi applications are built on the Ethereum network to date, the surge in the DeFi industry has driven a significant level of congestion as well as raised scalability issues. As a result, the Ethereum network commissions, or gas fees, have seen a sharp spike, resulting in Ethereum miners earning a record $500,000 in fees in a single hour on Sept. 1.

Following Uniswap’s UNI token launch, Ethereum transaction fees spiked to almost $1 million an hour on Sept. 18. Amid the increasing gas fees on the Ethereum network, Coinbase’s institutional trading arm, Coinbase Pro, required its customers to pay gas fees and withdrawal fees.