Base leads as Ethereum L2 transactions hit an ATH of 12.5 million

An unprecedented 12.52 million transactions were recorded on Ethereum layer-2 networks, reaching an all-time high.

According to Growthepie data, this peak, recorded on August 13, surpassed the previous record of 11.5 million transactions recorded on April 4. After a decline in activity between late April and early June, the number of transactions recovered in mid-June and maintained high volumes despite market uncertainties.

Leading the way among Ethereum (ETH) L2s, Coinbase’s Base reached a respectable 3.98 million transaction volume on its ATH day. Base’s performance is impressive despite its relative newness, having been launched just over a year ago.

Meanwhile, Arbitrum One followed closely behind with 1.79 million transactions on August 13. Notably, Base and Arbitrum One were the only networks to record transactions above the 1 million mark yesterday. OP Mainnet came in third on the list with 487,820 transactions, while Linea secured the fourth spot with 409,520 transactions.

In addition to the increase in transaction numbers, the stablecoin market cap on Ethereum L2s also increased significantly, reaching $9.69 billion.

However, despite the increase in transactions and stablecoin market cap, there has been a significant drop in fees paid by users. On August 13, users paid only $171,514 in fees, a drop from the peak of $4.2 million recorded on March 5.

The data shows that the 96% drop reflects that while activity on L2 networks increases, user costs decrease, especially during periods of market volatility. Cumulative active addresses on these L2 networks also fell by 16.23% last week to 5.29 million unique wallets.

Additionally, the six leading Ethereum L2 networks (Base, Arbitrum One, Linea, OP Mainnet, Scroll, and zkSync Era) saw different performance metrics in terms of active wallet addresses and cross-chain activity.

As the current frontrunner, Base recorded 3.25 million weekly active addresses despite only 9.1% of its activity being cross-chain, while Arbitrum One, despite being nearly three years old, maintained a strong position with 1.11 million weekly active addresses.

Linea, a one-year ZK Rollup, saw solid growth with 493,570 weekly active addresses. Notably, 43.6% of its activity involved multi-chain transactions. Meanwhile, Optimistic Rollup OP Mainnet witnessed 315.32K weekly active addresses.

Despite being just nine months old, Scroll reached 272,290 weekly active addresses, with 61.4% of its transactions involving multi-chain activity, the highest figure among the top six L2s. Another ZK Rollup, zkSync Era, recorded 261,260 weekly active addresses.