Polygon’s Active Addresses Surge 330%, Briefly Surpassing Ethereum

Layer 2 protocols have seen huge growth this year, with one protocol briefly surpassing the network using it as a scaling solution in terms of active addresses.

According to protocol co-founder Mihailo Bjelic, the number of daily active unique addresses on second-layer aggregator Polygon has surpassed that of high-fee first-layer Ethereum.

By his count, Polygon had 351,000 daily active addresses on Sept. 27, while Ethereum had 326,000.

Another huge milestone for Polygon!

For the first time we surpassed Ethereum L1 in terms of daily active addresses!

This is just the beginning. We are working around the clock to improve our technology, strengthen our ecosystem, and increase adoption.

Let's bring this world to Ethereum!

— Mihailo Bjelic (@MihailoBjelic) September 29, 2021

According to Polygonscan, the number of active addresses skyrocketed on Sept. 20, peaked at 426,586 on Sept. 27, and then fell back slightly to 385,740.

Etherscan reports that Ethereum’s daily active addresses were 457,402 on September 29, so the two are currently fairly even.

Over the past 3 months, the number of active addresses on Polygon has surged by 330%, while the same metric on Ethereum has actually dropped by 12% over the same period.

In terms of cumulative unique addresses, Ethereum is far ahead, with 170.8 million as of September 29, compared to Polygon’s 89 million yesterday, according to Etherscan. However, Matic only rebranded and launched as Polygon in February, so its growth happened in a shorter period of time.

According to Polygonscan, Polygon is currently seeing more transactions, recording a total of 5.7 million transactions on Sept. 29, compared with 1.1 million transactions on Ethereum’s first layer. Much of this can be attributed to Ethereum’s high fees, which have recently increased.

DeFiLlama currently reports the total value locked across all protocols on Polygon at $4.81 billion, but has more than halved since hitting an all-time high of $10.54 billion in mid-June. The most popular protocol on the Polygon network is flash loan platform Aave, which has a TVL of $1.77 billion, or 37% of the total.

Polygon received a ton of support when billionaire investor Mark Cuban added it to his portfolio in May. Polygon’s native token, still known as MATIC, has gained 5.2 percent in the past 24 hours to $1.14, according to data from CoinGecko.

Ethereum’s transaction fees have spiked again in recent days, which has also prompted a surge in activity on the second-layer protocol. According to Bitinfocharts, the current average transaction price on the Ethereum network is around $23. According to Etherscan, more complex operations, such as DEX token swaps or smart contract interactions, can cost as much as $66 in gas.

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