Over 637 Million EVM Smart Contracts Deployed Across Seven Layer-2 Blockchains Since January 2022

According to Blockworks, a Flipside Crypto report reveals that more than 637 million Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts have been deployed across seven layer-2 blockchains since January 2022. EVM-compatible smart contracts are software that the computing state of the Ethereum blockchain can understand. As scaling solutions become more efficient and accessible, fewer EVM contracts are directly deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. The upcoming Dencun update, which will introduce blob transactions and infrastructure upgrades, is expected to accelerate this trend. Optimism, an Ethereum optimistic rollup layer-2, currently leads the movement as the most popular blockchain for deployments, accounting for approximately 70% of the total EVM smart contract deployments this year. Flipside Crypto reports that the chain has seen over 28.8 million EVM deployments since January 1. However, for non-EVM smart contracts, Polygon and BNB smart chains (BSC) remain the most popular deployment chains. On September 6 last year, BSC recorded 5.3 million contracts deployed, the highest number ever seen on a chain, though this figure quickly declined around September 13. DeFi smart contracts have been the most popular for developers across all chains this year, accounting for about 34.7% of all categorized deployments. This number is roughly 11.2% higher than in 2022 and 2023. In contrast, NFT smart contracts, which drove the bull market between 2021 and 2022, have become less popular over time, with deployments decreasing from 18.6% to 8.2% in the same period. Uncategorized smart contracts, classified as "other" by Flipside Crypto, make up 93.8% of all smart contracts deployed across the observed chains, a significant increase from 2022's 37% and 2023's 86%.