There is no doubting that Ethereum has been the shining star this week. There is a glimmer of hope that it may finally be decoupling from its big brother and starting to move independently as it should. New research indicates that the Ethereum ecosystem is strengthening in more ways than one.

Ethereum: Greater Than The Sum …

The latest report from blockchain industry leaders ConsenSys has broken down the current state of the Ethereum network to provide more insight on its status. There has been no end of ETH bashing this year, from Bitcoin maximalists to leaders of rival platforms, all have taken a swipe at the world’s second largest crypto asset.

Most of this angst revolves around its stagnant market action in terms of price, and delays in rolling out updates to improve scalability. The price argument is really unjustified as all altcoins have been on the floor and there has been only one dominant digital asset this year.

The technical aspect however is currently being addressed and just like Rome, Ethereum cannot be built in a day. The report has highlighted some of the key numbers for the Ethereum ecosystem and includes live mainnet nodes which is currently over 8,930, unique addresses which tops 75 million, and average hash rate which is over 100 TH/s.

Total decentralized applications now number 2,600 with almost 17,000 daily users. As of June this year there were 1243 monthly active Ethereum developers which is way more than any rival platform can boast. The developer growth rate is 34% according to the report which is a good sign for the future of the platform.

The decentralized finance ecosystem is still embryonic but is clearly dominated by Ethereum. Over $1.5 million in ETH is now locked in MakerDAO smart contracts and Compound is rapidly growing as the second most popular DeFi platform for ETH.

Looking at Ethereum 2.0, there has been a successful recent test of network syncing between clients. The latest upgrades in the Serenity rollout are scheduled be deployed in the coming months and early into 2020 according to the roadmap.

Its All In The Numbers

These positive fundamentals for Ethereum may be starting to show in price and market action. Since last weekend ETH has gained over 24 percent in a climb from below $180 up to just over $220 earlier today. Daily volume has cranked from $5.5 billion to $10 billion and almost $4 billion has been added to Ethereum market cap.

These are still baby steps when looking at the bigger market picture for Ethereum, but the big hope now is that it can finally start moving independently of its big brother which is an entirely different digital animal all together.

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