• Ethereum’s ecosystem just hit a new ATH with 15.40M active addresses
• Base’s on-chain token activity bounced back last week, settling almost $4B in volume

Ethereum’s (ETH) network participation climbed to a new all-time high recently as active addresses hit 15.40 million over the past week. In fact, it registered a 62.68% spike on the charts. ETH’s adoption on the mainnet and Layer 2 chains saw a steep spike too.

The combined usage of Layer 2 saw all-time highs in dominance at 6.65x as the network experienced increased levels of transactions. The number of active addresses on multiple chains noted a slight drop to about 832k though.

Taken together, these updates indicated that Ethereum remains popular in various areas where institutions have invested in such as Real World Assets (RWAs), NFTs, DeFi protocols, and staking platforms.

The breakdown of multi-chain involvement revealed a positive trend, but it exhibited minimal decline since various platforms converged into efficient interoperable networks.

Better developer interest combined with institutional connections and projected ETH upgrade releases could drive additional capital from a hike in user engagement. Subsequently, the expansion of users could strengthen Ethereum’s infrastructure, together with its adoption cycles.

Performance of Base chain and other ETH L2s

The recent recovery in the Base ecosystem further reignited optimism across Ethereum’s Layer 2 sector. On-chain token activity on Base settled nearly $4 billion in volume over the last week – A remarkable 80% hike compared to the previous week.

This spike was observed in transaction volumes of Base tokens like BRETT, WELL, MORPHO and AERO, which spearheaded the turnaround.

The price performance breakdown gave credence to BRETT leadership with a weekly appreciation of 70%, while MORPHO rose by 25%.

WELL appreciated by 51.46%, while AERO had a marginal 11.91% appreciation. Other tokens like PRIME, ALB, DEGEN, and SONNE either had little to no recovery or were in considerable losses.

This momentum could make Base the most volume-active Ethereum L2, and its resurgence could be good news for all ETH’s Layer 2s.

Sustaining this momentum remains to be seen since much of it hinges on sustained token demand, liquidity levels, and overall market confidence. Meanwhile, some other Layer 2 tokens performed differently over the week.

Arbitrum (ARB) rose by 10.33% to $0.3343 with a volume of $123M. Optimism (OP) hiked by 11.34% to $0.7807, while Mantle (MNT) was close behind with an uptick of 7.02% and $195.5M volume. Starknet (STRK) appreciated by 9.36% to hit $0.1488 too.

Immutable, however, fell 4.72% with a $32.7M volume, showing worse sentiment than other L2s that had huge market caps close to it. This put the future of ETH L2s at stake, especially after the RISC-V proposal by Vitalik Buterin.