DappRadar: Ethereum's transaction volume skyrocketed to $119.5B in Q3 2020, growing nearly 1,200% from Q2, while DeFi apps accounted for 99% of that volume
The new figure matters because it quantifies how completely one category now defines Ethereum's economy — and how far usage has outrun the rest of the dapp landscape measured just a year earlier.
First-order effects
DeFi applications are now effectively the entirety of measurable Ethereum demand at 99% of $119.5B in Q3 volume, leaving non-DeFi dapps marginal to the network's economic activity.
DappRadar's quarterly numbers shift from tracking a multi-chain dapp market to functioning as a DeFi cycle gauge for Ethereum specifically.
Second-order effects
Rival chains like EOS and TRON, which shared the dapp volume picture in the 2019 cross-chain report, face value consolidating almost entirely onto Ethereum as DeFi composability concentrates liquidity.
Sustained DeFi throughput feeds directly into protocol growth: the CoinDesk study later recorded total value in DeFi protocols rising over 2,000% to $16.05B in 2020.
Third-order effects
With nearly all Ethereum usage tied to one financial category, the network's activity metrics become leveraged to crypto markets — a pattern DappRadar confirmed when ~150 active DeFi apps held ~$107B in user funds in early 2022, down $30B as the broader market sagged.
If the concentration holds, Ethereum's roadmap and fee economics get set by DeFi's needs rather than a diversified dapp base, making single-category risk a structural feature of the platform.
The trend: Blockchain activity is consolidating around a single dominant chain and a single dominant application category, turning Ethereum's network statistics into a proxy for the DeFi cycle itself.
A quick recap of the short and medium term of Ethereum scaling. TLDR: 1. Ultra-high scaling with sharding + rollups will be possible *in phase 1* 2. Sharding is NOT “cancelled” 3. Get on a rollup asap; you get 100x scaling even without eth2 https://twitter.com/...
The original ETH2 roadmap was created with 3 phases: 0. PoS (this is the one that's coming very soon) 1. Sharding of data, but not of computation (that is, the sharded chain will *include* ~2 MB/sec of data, but it will just be dumb data blobs, not txs) 2. Sharded tx processing
Currently, we have ~15-45 TPS. Rollups offer a ~100x increase in throughput. Sharding offers a ~64x increase. These two stack multiplicatively; rollups *on top of* sharding offer a ~6400x (!!) increase in throughput.
PS. @lightclients has a compelling take that rollups and sharding-of-tx-execution are actually *very similar* mechanisms. But this gets into more complicated theory and is further away from concrete consequences to applications... https://lightclient.io/...
Great post by @valkenburgh. I think this is an ideal, digestible article for a lot of folks that follow me and ask for good overviews of applicable laws in crypto. Great discussion about your 1st & 4th Amendment protections if you're a dev in American jurisdiction in particular. …
So it's not “rollups instead of sharding”, it's “rollups on top of sharding”. That said, rollups are already here or coming soon even before sharding, and rollups without sharding still offer that 100x increase in throughput. So get on a rollup today!
Gonna post this again because it went up over the weekend so I need to juice the clicks a bit. It's about DEX regulation/policy https://www.theblockcrypto.com/ ...
But if the trade is actually happening peer-to-peer, then the “DEX” being “used” is just software and an internet connection. [...] there is just decentralized exchange, the action, taking place using software tools, open blockchains, and the internet. @THORChain_org $RUNE https:…
“There are no DEXs; there is just decentralized exchange, the action, taking place using software tools, open blockchains, and the internet.” ~ @valkenburgh https://www.theblockcrypto.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
.@Tronfoundation: DeFi Ecosystem Transaction Volume in Q3 2020 The transaction volume increased by 2,577%. TRON's DEX category holds a 41% share of the total volume. The #dapp helping the category grow is #JustSwap. @justinsuntron @DeFi_JUST https://dappradar.com/... https://twit…
DappRadar 2020 Q3 #Dapp Industry Report is out! We're covering the performance of 13 #blockchains listed on DappRadar. - The activity across the dapp ecosystem has grown by 115%. - Total transaction volumes reached $125B in Q3 2020. Read our Q3 #report https://dappradar.com/...