Soaring DeFi Usage Drives Ethereum Contract Calls to New Record

Ethereum usage is rocketing as the number of contract calls – a metric for network activity – hits an all-time high.

• Coin Metrics reported Tuesday more than 3.1 million daily contract calls had gone through on July 25, an all-time high.
• A contract call is where a user requests a specific function from a smart contract that, unlike a transaction, doesn't publish anything on the blockchain – sort of like a dry run.
• Coin Metrics said record activity on Ethereum – now five years old – came primarily from the decentralized finance (DeFi), which has more than quadrupled in size to $4 billion total value locked, year-to-date.

• Coin Metrics analysts excluded from the figures abnormal network activity from a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack in October 2016, which saw daily contract calls spike from around 30,000 daily to 40 million.
• A spokesperson told CoinDesk the July 25 all-time high was much more "organic."
• The last time contract calls breached the three million milestone was during the "Black Thursday" sell-off on March 12.
• This surge in daily contract calls coincides with a resurging ether (ETH), the price of which has increased 26% in a week, from $236 to $320 by press time.

See also: Staking on Ethereum 2.0 Takes First Step With Test System for Validators