Smart contract blockchain Avalanche recorded a consistent surge in blockchain activity, as analysts pointed to growing decentralized trading activities and returning crypto whale speculation on the next emerging memecoin.
Avalanche’s transaction growth surpassed all other blockchains the past week, rising 66% to 11.9 million transactions across more than 181,000 active addresses, signaling growing investor mindshare focusing on the blockchain.
The milestone occurred after a “landmark effort” of the US Department of Commerce, which adopted Avalanche, along with nine other public decentralized blockchains, to publish its real gross domestic product (GDP), Cointelegraph reported on Friday.
Despite Avalanche’s growing institutional and governmental adoption, we “cannot at this point attribute this to the US Government adopting Avalanche for its GDP data,” said Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at the Nansen crypto intelligence platform.
The network’s increasing blockchain activity was mainly driven by decentralized finance (DeFi) traders, miner extractable value (MEV) trading bots and whales speculating on the next big memecoin launch, the analyst told Cointelegraph, adding:
“The transaction surge is driven by: 60% DeFi protocol activity (Trader Joe, Aave, Benqi), 25% Automated trading bots and MEV, and 10% Whale trading and memecoin speculation […].”
The research analyst explained that the additional 5% of blockchain activity was attributed to blockchain gaming and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Avalanche, top 5 entities by blockchain users, 180 days. Source: Nansen
Related: Avalanche, Toyota Blockchain designing autonomous robotaxi infrastructure
DEX trading, “high-balance” whales drove the majority of Avalanche blockchain activity: Nansen
Cryptocurrency trading on decentralized exchanges drove the lion’s share of Avalanche’s blockchain activity, with Trader Joe DEX as the “primary driver,” which saw over $333 million worth of Avalanche Wrapped Ether (WETH.e) volume during the past seven days.
“Key players” driving this activity included traders on Nansen’s top 100 leaderboard, who made multiple six-figure trades, Sondergaard said.
Aave lending protocol was the secondary driver with $624,000 worth of flash loan activity through DEX aggregators, while the Benqi Protocol was another significant driver, after receiving over $650,000 worth of deposits from cryptocurrency trading bots.
Automated trading activities and “high balance” whale addresses drove the rest of the blockchain activity, with the Black (BLACK) token seeing $14 million in trading volume, with multiple whale addresses amassing up to $95,000 worth of the token.
Related: Kanye West’s YZY token: 51,000 traders lost $74M, while 11 netted $1M
Top blockchains by key metrics, change in weekly transactions. Source: Nansen
Looking at one of Avalanche’s main competitors, the Solana blockchain saw a 6.7% decrease in weekly transactions, including 433 million transactions across 18.9 million active addresses, Nansen data shows.
Solana top entities by weekly transactions. Source: Nansen
Similar to Avalanche, DEX trading drove the majority of blockchain activity, including Raydium DEX with 12.4 million users and 297 million transactions, followed by Fluxbeam DEX with 7.3 million users and 178 million transactions.
Magazine: Altcoin season 2025 is almost here… but the rules have changed