Mining on Ethereum breaks records
Saturday, June 4, the mining difficulty on the Ethereum blockchain reached a historic high. According to data from Etherscan, this difficulty rose to 15,089.793 terrahashes (TH).
The higher this value, the harder it becomes to mine a block on the network. Thus, this metric is a increasing function of the computing power deployed by all miners, in order to guarantee the stability of the blockchain.
Figure 1: The difficulty of mining on Ethereum
As shown in Figure 1, since the Chinese ban last summer, the difficulty of mining keeps increasing as new miners come to strengthen the network. Moreover, the computing power deployed by the latter has also reached a new record this Saturdayaccording to the CoinWars website.
Figure 2: Ethereum hashrate
The hashrate, as it is called, would thus have reached a maximum peak at 1.318 8 petahashes per second (PH/s). The conditional is used here, because Etherscan returns a daily average value of 1.08 PH/s and does not offer an intraday chart to compare the data.
Nevertheless, that does not detract from the fact that the month of May will have constituted a record for computing power deployed by miners on Ethereum, and that June seems confirm the trend.
👉 To go further – Find our guide on Ethereum (ETH)
Network usage follows the decline
Ironically, while the competition between minors has never been so fierce, the network sees its attendance hitting yearly lows with 401,055 active addresses on June 4. It’s necessary go back to December 10, 2020with 381,124 active addresses, to find a lower value.
Figure 3: Active addresses on Ethereum
June 4th also sees a yearly low on the number of daily transactions, for a total of 1,029,121. Like the number of active addresses, Figure 4 shows us that we also have to go back to the end of 2020 to find lower values. Namely November 29, 2020 for 993,930 transactions.
Figure 4: Number of daily transactions
This downtrend in Ethereum blockchain solicitation benefits these users. Indeed, the price of transactions has been particularly low in recent months, compared to what could be seen in the heart of the bull run.
Figure 5: Average price of a transaction
On May 28, the average price of a transaction was $3.73, a low since July 11, 2021 which recorded $2.43.
The statistical aberration visible in Figure 5, bringing a daily average to $200.06 on May 1, corresponds to the sale of land in Otherside, Yuga Labs’ metaverse.
The upcoming arrival of the Merge
The decrease in network traffic is not exclusive to Ethereum. Rather, it follows a general trend, due to the fall in prices themselves, making shun investors.
Like other cryptocurrencies, ETH is currently working a hinge zone, which was also defended around this time last year. This area is around $1,800.
Figure 6: ETH price
An idea popular in the ecosystem describes that the price of ETH could rebound as Ethereum transitions to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus: the merge.
This idea is defended by a upcoming drastic drop in rewards assigned to each block generation. Coupled with the burn mechanism, implemented last August with EIP-1559 integrationthis historic change would be the equivalent of three halvings on the Bitcoin (BTC) network in terms of inflation reduction.
Figure 7: Number of ETH burned since the implementation of EIP-1559
Whereas 2.4 million ETH have already been burnedthe scarcity of the asset will tend to decrease further, provided that the change in consensus goes well.
We can then understand Ethereum’s recent mining records. Minors benefit from last months when it is still possible to accumulate ETH by proof-of-work (PoW), before this activity stop.
However, there is no guarantee that the Merge will drive up prices. First, it will depend on overall ecosystem healthbut also keep in mind that 10% of all ETH in the network will return to circulation.
The staking contract for Ethereum, 2.0 implemented on November 3, 2020, indeed counts nearly 12.8 million ETH. These will be released some time after final settings, once the switch to proof-of-stake has taken place. Investors may therefore choose to take profitthus driving the price down.
👉 Also in the News – New York Senate Passes Moratorium on Cryptocurrency Mining
Sources: Etherscan, CoinWarz, TradingView, Beacon Chain contract
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About the Author : Vincent Mayor
I timidly discovered the world of blockchain at the end of 2018 during my quest for financial freedom. Initially invested moderately, it was only two years later that I took the gamble of betting everything on the movement that was taking shape then. I then dedicate 2021 to training myself better to acquire more knowledge and seriousness. As I often like to say: I still have a billion things to learn. And what I do know, I want to share with you.
All articles by Vincent Maire.