In virtually every area, Ethereum, the largest smart contract blockchain protocol in the world, seems to be growing at an exponential rate.

According to Joseph Lubin, the co-creator of Ethereum and the founder of ConsenSys, a blockchain software studio based in New York that houses 1,000 developers:

“Blockchain is more than a market. It’s a movement. Market cap doesn’t refleft (sic) activity. Decentralized networks are growing. 10 billion daily API requests served by Infura. 1 million Truffle downloads. 1 million MetaMask downloads. 12,000 live Ethereum nodes. 48 million unique Ethereum addresses. 3 times LinkedIn blockchain job openings.”

Truffle, Infura, MetaMask, Nodes, Jobs

Ethereum’s three major products Truffle, Infura, and MetaMask, often called “TIM” by the community, serve as the backbone of the infrastructure surrounding the asset.

Truffle is an Ethereum blockchain development framework that allows developers to build blockchain products. Infura is a node infrastructure that processes requests on popular applications. MetaMask is the most widely utilized Ethereum and ERC20 wallet, which runs on Infura.

On November 4, it was reported that the three blockchain tools achieved major milestones. MetaMask launched a mobile client, Truffle secured one million downloads, and Infura surpassed 10 billion requests.

Despite the bear market during which Ethereum lost 92 percent of its value from its peak on January 13, the user base of the blockchain protocol has increased substantially and the infrastructure supporting the ecosystem has strengthened quite noticeably.

ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin emphasized that the usage of Ethereum in developing countries like the Philippines has started to increase, with the Philippines connecting rural banks via a crypto-cash payment system, an initiative led by one of the country’s most influential banks, Union Bank.

Considering that the Ethereum ecosystem has continued to grow throughout the past eleven months regardless of the poor performance of major cryptocurrencies, Lubin stated that he remains optimistic in the long-term growth and trend of Ethereum:

“I believe in blockchain technology because of the people behind it. The developers, engineers, and technologists who build. The smart contract experts who audit and secure the code. The designers who care deeply about user experience. The marketers who tell the story of Web3.”

Projects Seem to be on the Same Page as Lubin

While the common narrative on the decline in the Ethereum price throughout 2018 remains as the sell-off of ETH by initial coin offering (ICO) projects, a recent report has revealed that ICOs have not actually sold a big portion of their ETH.

Apart from a certain portion of ETH raised from the token sale, most ICOs seem to be holding a fairly large portion of their holdings in ETH.

Marat Garafutdinov, an analyst at HASH CIB, wrote:

“Given the data we have, we are confident to say that ICO projects reacted to the market conditions, rather than dictated them.The treasuries currently still hold a minimum of 3.4% of the total ethereum supply. Our findings have been confirmed by separate researchers. And contradicted by some — most probably, due to reporters equalling all of the ETH moved to ETH directly sold.”

The cryptocurrency sector has experienced the bubble-crash-build-rally cycle five times in the past nine years. But, each year, the market saw a significant amount of work, resources, and capital come in to support the next wave of investors, developers, entrepreneurs, and projects.

Featured Image from Collision Conference/Flickr