The past month has witnessed a boom in activity across Ethereum layer-2 networks, with combined L2 throughput outpacing transactions on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet. Surprisingly, the price of ETH has also dropped drastically within the daily time frame.

Ethereum’s L2 performance

According to L2beat, the daily average scaling throughput of Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem hit a record high of 175.33 on Aug. 14. 

The milestone comes as Base has overtaken the Ethereum mainnet, with daily activity sitting at 46.98 TPS - compared to 14.8 TPS for Ethereum. In the last 30 days, the transaction count for Base is about 111 million, while Ethereum's is far behind at 33 million.

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Base, an L2 solution launched by Coinbase, experienced a 15.59% growth in activity TPS in the past week. Base's unique features, like increased transaction speed and improved efficiency, have strengthened activity. The rising popularity of Friend Tech, a social app that allows users to own personalized shares, has also sparked activity on Base.

Meanwhile, Taiko ranks second with 21.58 TPS, Arbitrum with 20.94 TPS and Immutable with 20.59 TPS. However, Arbitrum and Base still command a large percentage of the $36.42 billion in total value locked in layer 2s, with $14.5 billion and $6.2 billion, respectively. Optimism comes in third with $5.5 billion, Blast with $1.75 billion and Mantle with $1.2 billion.

Ethereum’s price drop

The price of Ethereum has been experiencing short-term volatility amid a broader bearish outlook on the market. 

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As of this writing, ETH trades at $2,665, decreasing by 3.5% in the past day. At the same time, the trading volume also declined by 6.5% to $14 billion. This price reduction in the cryptocurrency might have been fueling reduced throughput.