Number of smart contracts on Ethereum soars to 16-month high following Merge upgrade

As the cryptocurrency market seemingly started waking up from its weeks-long hibernation, the smart contract activity on some blockchains seems to have picked up, including on Ethereum (ETH).

Indeed, while the number of new smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum chain decreased during the bear market, the activity has picked up since October 9, as observed by Easy OnChain, a crypto analyst at the research company CryptoQuant on October 26.

What is behind such a massive growth?

According to this analyst, the decrease in Ethereum smart contract activity recorded during the bear market, among other things, was “probably because no one wanted to put out a new dApp project while the market was going down.”

That said, a dramatic increase in the number of new smart contracts on the network, which started on October 9, might reflect developers’ renewed optimism, or as the analyst explained:

“This could indicate that developers have improved their expectations about the future of the market and activity on the network.”

Finally, Easy OnChain concludes that “if these new contracts are developed for new applications, we will be able to see many launches in the near future that could stimulate activity on the network.”

It is also worth noting that the most recent uptick in Ethereum on-chain activity arrived a little over three weeks after the long-anticipated Merge upgrade, which officially marked the network’s transition to the proof-of-stake (PoS) algorithm.

On top of that, as Finbold noted in mid-October, Ethereum had been adding about 86,945 unique addresses per day since the upgrade, indicating the public’s increased interest in the network with growing use cases.

Ethereum price analysis

Meanwhile, Ethereum is changing hands at $1,496, which represents a 3.84% decrease on the day, after over $20 billion had been pumped into the decentralized finance (DeFi) asset’s market capitalization earlier in the week, sending its price above $1,500 for the first time since the post-Merge crash.

At the same time, the present price also represents an increase of 16.45% across the previous week, while the market cap of the still second-largest crypto by this indicator stands at $185.01 billion.

Interestingly, technical indicators and some analysts suggest that Ethereum could surge in 2023, even breaking above $3,000, as Finbold earlier reported.

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