Ethereum Smashes Records as DeFi Hype Sends Transactions and Miner Revenue Soaring
Miners may be the real winners from DeFi as a surge in Ethereum activity sees them earn a record $16 million in a day.
Sep 18, 2020 at 10:35 a.m. UTCUpdated May 9, 2023 at 3:11 a.m. UTC
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Miners on crypto's second-biggest blockchain had a bumper day Thursday, earning a record $16 million for confirming a growing number of DeFi-related transactions.
- Data collected from Etherscan shows miners collected a total 42,763 ether in transaction fees on Thursday, a new all-time high.
- That's currently worth nearly $16.5 million, according to CoinDesk data.
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- That comes as daily volumes on Ethereum surged nearly 400,000 on Thursday to 1.4 million transactions, also smashing the previous 1.34 million record reached in January 2018.
- Activity has skyrocketed in the past year as the hype around decentralized finance, which is mostly built on Ethereum, has reached fever pitch.
- Statistics site DeFi Prime shows monthly volumes for decentralized exchanges, which include Uniswap, Curve and Balancer, surged nearly $4 billion to a total of $16 billion by Sept. 1.
- At the start of the year, combined volumes barely reached $600 million.
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- There is currently over $9 billion worth of assets locked in DeFi applications, according to DeFi Pulse, up from approximately $675 million at the start of the year.
- Earlier this week, Tether moved 1 billion worth of USDT – a stablecoin supported on many DeFi applications – from the Tron to the Ethereum ecosystem on behalf of an unnamed exchange, the second such billion-dollar swap in the past month.
- Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino told CoinDesk it was "definitely probable" exchanges wanted more USDT on Ethereum so they can satisfy rising demand coming from the DeFi space.
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