The crypto market has lacked a clear overall trend recently, but on-chain data continues to rise. Santiment data shows that the number of non-empty wallets for several major networks and assets continues to increase, indicating that user holding and usage behavior has not stopped during periods of limited price volatility.
Ethereum surpasses 200 million addresses
In the past two weeks, the number of non-empty Ethereum wallets has surpassed 200 million for the first time. During the same period, the number of XRP Ledger and USDC funding addresses on the Ethereum chain both exceeded 8 million, and the number of non-empty wallets on Chainlink also exceeded 900,000.
A non-empty wallet does not equate to a real number of users, and one person may control multiple addresses. However, this metric is still frequently used to observe network adoption. It at least indicates that more addresses are still holding assets, participating in application interactions, or continuing to remain in the on-chain ecosystem.
The scope of USDC usage continues to expand.
The article mentions that the growth in USDC holding addresses is related to the expanding use of compliant stablecoins. As Circle continues to expand its banking partnerships, custody networks, payment infrastructure, and global distribution, USDC's use in cross-border payments, settlements, and DeFi continues to increase.
This also means that some wallets are holding USDC not just for short-term transactions, but for payments, settlements, and daily on-chain transactions.
XRP addresses grow in tandem with Chainlink addresses.
The growth in XRP Ledger addresses corresponds to the expansion of scenarios such as cross-border payments, tokenization, DeFi, and enterprise blockchain. The article also mentions that Hong Kong launched its first licensed retail XRP trading platform this week, providing retail investors with a compliant trading channel and further strengthening the local development of a digital asset center.
For Chainlink, as its oracle network is increasingly used for tokenization, cross-chain interoperability, and institutional-grade blockchain applications, the number of long-term holders is also increasing. The article argues that this demand stems more from infrastructure usage than from transactions themselves.
Overall, with no significant price breakthrough yet, the continued growth in the number of addresses reflects the expanding user base and actual usage of some mainstream crypto networks. For the market, this type of data is more indicative of medium- to long-term adoption changes than short-term price fluctuations.
