ETH Price

Transactions

Miners/Validators

Lido

Introduction

On September 15th, Ethereum successfully performed “The Merge”. Ethereum successfully transitioned to the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus model. With Proof of Stake, transactions are validated by users that have a big ‘stake’ in the network, meaning they have a considerable amount of ETH. Previously, using the Proof of Work model, miners were the ones validating transactions. The transition to Proof of Stake has made the miners obsolete.

In this dashboard, we’ll examine the user behavior before and after the Merge and how it changed using numerous different metrics in four main categories: Miners/Validators, ETH price, Transactions and Lido.

The timeframe of all graphs can be adjusted using the days parameter above. The default is the last 30 days.

Methodology

Both these graphs were made using data collected from the ethereum.core.fact_blocks table.

For the number of unique block validators per day, we count the number of distinct miners per day using count(distinct(miner)) as unique_miners.

For the daily average number of blocks validated per validator, we first count the number of blocks each validator has signed per day. Then we take the average across all validators.

Analysis

In these graphs, there is a very clear difference before and after the Merge. We can see that the number of validators increases significantly. This can be explained using the new proof of stake system. With PoS, more users can validate blocks as the process is much more efficient than proof of work. This is reflected in the graphs.

This also explains why the average number of blocks validated per validator is much lower now, as there are way more validators while the number of blocks roughly stayed the same.

Methodology

The price of ETH was received using the ethereum.core.fact_hourly_token_prices

table. To get the price of ETH we have to select all rows where token_address is null as the native ETH token is the only token with no token address.

Since the table contains the hourly price, we take the average per day.

Analysis

It is clear that the price of ETH has dropped signigicaly since the Merge took place. Therefore, the Merge can probabaly be regarded as a ‘buy the rumor, sell the news’ type of event. In the month preceding the Merge, the price of ETH has increased significanly because of the rumor of the Merge. But now that the Merge happened, or the news, users start selling.

Key findings

• The daily number of unique validators has increased 10x since the Merge, from about 50 to around 500. This also meant that the average number of blocks mined (or validated) per validator has decreased significaly since the Merge.
• In term of the price of ETH, the Merge can be regarded as a ‘buy the rumor, sell the news’ type of event as the price of ETH quicly decreased after the Merge.
• Total number of daily transactions and TPS has stayed roughly constant after the Merge. The average transaction fee also stayed the same. This was expected as these metrics were not the focus of the Merge.
• After the Merge, the largest ETH stake platform Lido saw a significant increase in new users and deposits.

Methodology

The daily average transactions per second and the total number of transactions per day were made using data from the table ethereum.core.fact_blocks table using the tx_count column.

We take the sum of the tx_count to get the total number of transactions per day. We then divide by 86400 to get the average number of transactions per second for each day.

For the daily average transaction fee, we use the ethereum.core.fact_transactions table. This table contains a column tx_fee that contains the transaction fee for all transactions on Ethereum. First, we take the average of this tx_fee and then multiply this average by the average daily price of ETH.

This results in the average transaction fee in USD.

Analysis

Contrary to other section there seems to be little difference for these metrics before and after the Merge. Yes, in the first 3 days after the Merge, the daily average and total number of transactions seemed to be higher, but the there is currenly no real difference compared to the weeks prior to the Merge.

The same holds for the average transaction fee in USD. It seems to be somewhat lower than prior to the Merge, but nothing significant.

Why havent these metrics changed much after the Merge? Well, the Merge is only the first step in the transition the a more scalable Ethereum. In this ‘update’ Ethereum transitioned to Proof of Stake, but no upgrades were done to improve Transactions per Second or to lower transaction fees. This will be the focus of future upgrates to Ethereum. Therefore, it makes sense that these metrics have not changed much with the Merge.

Methodology

This section focuses on the largest staking platform on Ethereum, Lido.

We focus on two metrics: new Lido stakers and the daily amount of ETH deposited into Lido.

In order to find the number of new stakers at Lido we use the ethereum.core.fact_event_logs table in combination with the contract of stETH:

0xae7ab96520DE3A18E5e111B5EaAb095312D7fE84 and select transactions where the from_address the null address to find all deposit transactions for ETH on Lido. We then calculate the date each stakers has started staking and count the number of stakers that have the same starting date.

For the daily amount of ETH deposited into Lido, a similar approach was used. We use the same contract and from_address to find all deposit transactions into Lido. Then we use event_inputs:value/1e18 to calculate the deposit size in ETH.

Finally, take the sum of the deposits per day.

Analysis

We can see a clear increase in deposits and new stakers on Lido following the Merge. This can be expected as the Merge was successful, thus officially transitioning Ethereum to a proof of stake blockchain. This was of course beneficial to the confidence in the staking platform on Lido. This is reflected in the gain in new stakers and deposits after the Merge.