The Ethereum (ETH) network continues to exist a major driving strength behind decentralized finance, or DeFi, signaling the continuation of a trend that began around mid-2020, according to a new quarterly DeFi written report past ConsenSys.

Toward the end of June 2022, 2.91 million unique Ethereum addresses interacted with at least 1 DeFi protocol, representing 65% growth from the previous quarter. "As community driven educational activity, unproblematic user interfaces, appealing yields and general awareness around DeFi all-time practices increased throughout the quarter, and so too did the number of new addresses," the report read.

ConsenSys cautioned that not-custodial wallets like MetaMask make information technology easier for people to create and fund multiple accounts, which means the number of addresses and users is not perfectly aligned. Nevertheless, MetaMask can be seen every bit some other important gauge for identifying trends in DeFi. Equally ConsenSys noted, past June i, the monthly agile users on MetaMask surpassed seven.iii meg. At the fourth dimension of writing, ConsenSys counts 8.five million monthly active MetaMask users. The written report explained:

"This is in part due to the growth of DeFi applications on other Ethereum Virtual Automobile compatible networks that users tin can access via MetaMask, similar BSC and Polygon."

Related: MetaMask cites 'global south' for its 5x increment in users

MetaMask, which was launched by ConsenSys in 2022, has become one of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets for DeFi users. Its popularity has too been associated with the growing adoption of decentralized exchanges like Uniswap.

Unsurprisingly, DeFi's growth has been accompanied by a dramatic surge in Ethereum addresses. At the time of writing, the Ethereum network had over 165 one thousand thousand unique addresses, upward from around 131 million at the get-go of the year, according to data provided past Etherscan. As such, active DeFi addresses business relationship for less than 2% of all Ethereum addresses.

Beyond active addresses, the supply of stablecoins is another important metric ConsenSys used to track the growth of DeFi:

"Stablecoin supply continued to grow at a rapid pace in Q2 2022, now representing a full issuance of nearly $65 billion USD, up more than lx% since the end of Q1 2022."

By the cease of the second quarter, Tether (USDT) deemed for 48% of Ethereum'southward stablecoin market. That'due south downward from effectually 58% at the cease of the first quarter, which indicates growing uses for USDT'southward major competitors.

Related: How stablecoins stay stable, explained

Some of the other major themes identified in the study include the broadening of decentralized exchanges, the institutional button into DeFi and the apparent growth of decentralized autonomous organizations. The report also talked about the growing importance of token governance and the need to solve DeFi scaling issues.