With each passing year, the global blockchain ecosystem has continued to celebrate booming on-chain activity — even though the weight of congestion on it has grown considerably. To this point, Ethereum alone generated roughly $2.48 billion in transaction fees through 2024 (averaging over $6.7 million per day) a reflection of not only its DeFi dominance but also mounting internal costs.
Despite these woes, capital remained overwhelmingly concentrated on just a handful of networks (Ethereum’s DeFi TVL was on the order of $64 billion as of mid-2025), while newer L2s collectively earned under $300 million in fees last year. Amidst this backdrop of high fees, clogged networks, and vast amounts of locked capital, the industry’s hunger for scaling solutions has become increasingly more visible.
Stepping into this breach has been Etherlink, a community-driven L2 built using Tezos’ Smart Rollup technology. Designed from the ground up to deliver sub-second confirmations and nearly zero fees, Etherlink promises the best of both worlds, i.e Ethereum tooling and user experience, with Tezos-grade security and governance.
Soft blocks finalize in under 500ms, fees stay “at only a fraction of a cent”, and developers can deploy unmodified EVM smart contracts just as they would on Ethereum. Critically, Etherlink is non-custodial and decentralized such that any user can run a node, post commitments, and challenge state, while a Tezos-style on-chain governance system vets upgrades.
The result is a “Tezos-enshrined L2 rollup” that is explicitly built to scale Web3 apps horizontally without compromising security.
More scalable, more efficient, and ready for the future – welcome to Dionysus 🍇🎭
— Etherlink 🔗 (@etherlink) May 22, 2025
⛽️ Lower fees under high load
💾 Boosting Etherlink with the @tezos DAL
🚛 Improved support for large transactions
⚡️ Enabling fast withdrawals of FA tokens
⚒️ EVM Dencun support pic.twitter.com/PZsPdDPAQj
Etherlink’s growth accelerates as milestones continue to be met
Since exiting its public beta in early 2025, Etherlink’s overarching development has moved at warp speed with the network officially hitting production-ready status at ETHDenver earlier this year in February 2025, unveiling major initiatives alongside the launch.
For instance, the Apple Farm program – a $3 million rewards scheme – was announced to incentivize early adopters, along with a developer “builder’s program” to attract projects as a result of which, Etherlink’s DeFi TVL jumped from virtually zero to $10.8 million by the end of Q1 2025 – a nearly 62x increase from the prior quarter.
Etherlink TVL rose by 6,200% during Q1 2025 (source: Messari)
Transaction activity exploded too in early 2025, with Etherlink processing over 1.4 million transactions per month – roughly 72% of the volume of Tezos L. And, in Q1 for the first time it collected more fees than Tezos itself (10,302 XTZ vs. 8,500 XTZ) making plain that liquidity and users seem to be flocking to Etherlink.
Even before the aforementioned surge, Etherlink had already demonstrated rapid adoption as in Q4 2024, just months after its launch, contract deployments on Etherlink soared by 184% QoQ (over 1,700 new contracts). That same period saw nearly half a million monthly transactions – about 18% of Tezos L1’s count – despite Etherlink being brand-new.
Messari’s State of Tezos report noted Etherlink’s “rapid adoption within just six months of launch” has been thanks to its cost effectiveness, a sentiment that was echoed the platform’s millions in trade volume as by the time Apple Farm launched, Etherlink’s integrated protocols had already recorded over $2 million in volume.
Lastly, Etherlink’s roadmap has kept pace with its usage growth with its second major upgrade, Bifröst (activated in late 2024), adding an improved FA2.1 token bridge for arbitrary asset transfers, better on-chain indexing (helping tools like Blockscout work more smoothly), and various performance tweaks to reduce RPC latency.
Around the same time Etherlink also rolled out a custom “.etherlink” domain system via Freename, letting users claim names (similar to ENS) and giving the ecosystem a fresh identity.
Bootstrapping everything from the ground up
The most visible impact of Etherlink’s fast chains and low fees has been witnessed within its DeFi and gaming initiatives. A cornerstone of this growth has been Apple Farm, which as mentioned earlier, is a gamified rewards program run in partnership with incentive platform Merkl.
Apple Farm Episode 4 is live! 🍿
— Etherlink 🔗 (@etherlink) May 8, 2025
Fresh opportunities for the next two weeks are now available on the Apple Farm website.
There are no major changes to this Episode, except for lending ETH, which has received an increase in daily rewards.
Bigger updates coming soon. 👀 pic.twitter.com/I5EMIcOnbg
Launched alongside its mainnet debut, Apple Farm allocates $3 million in token rewards to users who explore Etherlink’s DeFi applications. Participants earn points (called “Apples”) for on-chain actions – trading, lending, adding liquidity, etc. – as a way to learn and bootstrap the ecosystem.
Beyond incentives, a thriving DeFi scene has emerged organically with projects like Uranium.io bringing novel angles such as real-world-assets (RWA) to the mix. As the world’s first decentralized marketplace for physical uranium trading (by offering tokenized U3O8 contracts), investors on Etherlink can gain exposure to uranium in a regulated and auditable way.
U308 🤝 Etherlink
— Etherlink 🔗 (@etherlink) December 3, 2024
Introducing @uranium_io – a new marketplace for trading uranium!
• Access tokenized physical uranium ⚛️
• Secure onchain ownership 🔒
• No large lot size restrictions 🫨
This is just the start for real-world assets on Etherlink 🔥
Follow @uranium_io to… pic.twitter.com/9A9eAHY4m6
Other ecosystem pieces seem to have also fallen into place concurrently. For example, the Tezos ecosystem has reported that over 15,000 NFTs were minted through Etherlink via integrations like Rarible in early 2025.
What lies ahead?
Even though Etherlink may be young, its trajectory has clearly outlined what a fast, cheap, and decentralized L2 can unlock. By design, it relieves congestion pressures as users can interact with DeFi, gaming and RWA projects without fear of being priced out by gas fees. Furthermore, its growth during late 2024 and early 2025 – evident in contract deployment surges and heavy new-chain activity – suggests that many in the crypto community see it as a timely solution.
Therefore, if the ongoing momentum continues, Etherlink’s story could serve as a case study in bridging blockchains, drawing in even more Ethereum developers and capital in the near to mid term.
