The transaction volume in the Ethereum network in December 2018 reached $115 million, which according to specialists of the analytics company Diar is the maximum value over the entire existence of the Ethereum project (excluding the period after the hard fork associated with The DAO hack in 2016). And this is despite the fact that by the summer of 2018 the transaction volume in the Ethereum network in its own cryptocurrency had fallen by half compared to the beginning of the year
In terms of the number of transactions, the Ethereum network was stable starting in October – the average monthly value was 16-17 million. According to their estimates, in January 2019 this figure will be around 15 million. However, in dollar terms the value of operations in the network fell from $1.1 billion in 2017 last year to $815 million. Compared to December, in the current month this figure fell by 97% – presumably due to the 80% drop in the price of ETH. Today the price of ETH is $116.64 per unit.
The report's authors also note the low likelihood that transaction fees became a deterring factor, since by this indicator ETH is at one of the lowest levels among other cryptocurrencies. In addition, it is said that the developers are thinking about long-term prospects, and meanwhile the postponed Constantinople upgrade will reduce fees even further, which will positively affect some types of transactions
Let us recall that at the last video conference the Ethereum developers chose a new activation date for the Constantinople hard fork on the network: under the new plan it will take place at block 7280000. The EIP-1283 improvement, in which a vulnerability was discovered that caused the hard fork to be postponed 36 hours before the block chosen for it, was decided to be completely removed from the update.
