Ethereum gas price spikes 29% in January as user activity grows: Report

Stepping into 2023, the cryptocurrency market seemingly shrugged off the year-long bearish sentiment from 2022. As investors took notice, the long-awaited price corrections had a significant reaction, showcased through on-chain activities on the Ethereum blockchain.

According to a data report from Analytex, Ethereum’s average gas price — calculated in terms of the smallest Ether (ETH) denomination, gwei — increased by 29.27% in January 2023. The report compares gas prices from January to December 2022, noting an increase in user activity as a key indicator for the rise in average gas price from 19.2 gwei to 24.82 gwei month-on-month.

The report also notes that the average number of unique active Ethereum wallets per day decreased by around 10% to 387,475, the lowest figure over the past six months. Meanwhile, the average number of unique active smart contracts increased by 6.74%.

As shown above, other important metrics measured include daily Ethereum transaction data, which showed a slight decrease of 0.8% from December to January. The report notes that the average number of Ethereum transactions per day has declined for eight months.

Ethereum block statistics show that the average number of blocks mined each day showed little to no change, while the total block size per month increased by 7%. Following the Merge, daily average block data has been stable at around 0.01% monthly. The total Ethereum block size per month for January was 17.24 GB, up 7.08% from December’s 16.1GB total.

The report highlights contrasting data metrics across the board. The number of transactions and unique active wallets was down from December. The Ethereum activity index also showed that the number of active smart contracts and average gas cost prices have increased.

Analytex suggests that this indicates “increased interest of both current blockchain users, as well as smart contracts developers.“

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols saw an increase in total value locked across different staking pools in January, per a report from DappRadar. The market hit $74.6 billion worth of staked assets, increasing by 26% from December 2022.

Ethereum’s looming Shanghai upgrade is also driving staking in DeFi due to the expected opening of withdrawals from Ethereum staking contracts. Lido Finance flipped Maker DAO as the largest DeFi protocol in January, driven by the popularity of liquid staking derivative protocols.