EMV Smart Contract Deployment Snapshot
Smart Contracts in 2024
Ethereum’s highly anticipated Dencun upgrade is preparing to cut cost-friction for L2s and improve scalability next week. Given the upgrade and shifting market momentum, we’ve taken a snapshot of smart contract activity to understand how developer and user activity has changed in recent years.
This Smart Contract Deployment Snapshot includes deployments, deployer profiles, and contract compositions across the leading EVM chains. It provides a detailed assessment of the data in our EVM Developer Snapshot Dashboard, which pulls real-time onchain data across seven observed chains.
By comparing current and past developer activity, our findings are intended to help make informed projections about the industry’s trajectory as we pass through the threshold of a newly-energized market.
Summary
A new era for L2s
The diversification in smart contract deployments across leading EVM chains, coupled with a surge in DeFi-related contracts and deployers, signals an ongoing market reorientation towards more financially innovative, utility-driven blockchain applications. As the majority of EVM contracts are no longer deployed directly on Ethereum, we expect the forthcoming Dencun upgrade to further accelerate this trend as L2 solutions become more accessible and efficient.
Trends at a glance
- 637.9M EVM smart contracts have been deployed since Jan 2022
- DeFi-related contract deployers are on the rise, accounting for 34.7% of categorizable deployers
- NFT-related deployers decreased from 18.6% to 8.2%
- General-purpose EVM chains are coalescing towards specific use cases, contrary to design
