Ethereum pulled off a stunning technical upgrade that saw the popular blockchain transition to the proof-of-stake consensus model for processing transactions after six years of work. However, post-merge activity on layer-2 has dropped.
According to the latest stats by Dapp Radar, the already descending unique active wallets and transactions have further dropped by 35% from August to September. A similar trend was seen in terms of Ethereum’s TVL, which fell by 5.6% to $31.41 billion month-to-month.
“Due to the high economic uncertainty and current macroeconomic landscape, and taking into consideration that the merge wasn’t a huge scaling event but only a tiny step in the Ethereum roadmap, the indicators are showing us that the Merge hadn’t had this huge impact people expected.” – reads the post.
The sidechain protocol known for executing cheaper fees and much faster transaction rates also saw the same descending trend as Ethereum. The FOMO-fueled pre-Merge enthusiasm pushed transactions by 6.5% and unique active wallets (UAW) by 4% higher from June to August 2022 on Polygon.
However, a sharp decrease was noted in September as the hype faded. Month-to-month, a decrease of 33% in transactions and a 17% drop in unique active wallets.
Another Ethereum sidechain, Ronin, which also happens to be the backbone of Axie Infinity, suffered a similar fate. Its transactions count and unique active wallets were down by 51% and 54%, respectively, from August 2022.
Since the beginning of 2022, Optimism, the layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, has maintained an upward trajectory even as its transactions count and unique active wallets both fell by 37% compared to the previous month. It is, however, worth noting that, Optimism saw an increase of 194% in transactions count and 275% in unique active wallets and has been touted as the “best-performing protocols during this crypto winter” by the report.
From July to August, its TVL rose by 228%, from around $274.46 million to nearly $902.74 million. The following month it saw a minor decline of 2% to $884.6 million.
Another layer-2 solution project that was on the winning side during this bear market is Arbitrum. Its already ascending transactions count further increased by 54.7% from August to September. Its TVL also rose by 2% in September to approximately $979 million from the previous month.