Flipside’s “EVM Smart Contract Deployment Snapshot” report reveals that 637.9 million Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts deployed since January 2022, signaling a seismic shift in developer and user activity on blockchain platforms. Polygon and BNB Smart Chain are at the forefront of this surge, with Optimism alone accounting for two-thirds of the total EVM smart contract deployments in 2024.
Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade, which is set to happen on Mar. 13th and is expected to lower layer-2 gas fees, could further catalyze the diversification of smart contract deployments, according to the report. Developers increasingly opt for financially innovative, utility-driven blockchain applications.
Decentralized finance-related contracts are particularly on the rise, with deployers in this category now representing 34.7% of all deployers since the start of 2024, a significant increase from 11.2% observed in the previous two years. This uptick aligns with the heightened trading activity in recent markets and suggests a market reorientation towards this sector.
Conversely, the non-fungible token (NFT) sector has seen a decline, with deployers dropping from 18.6% to 8.2% over the same period. This trend hints at a potential decentralized finance-focused bull run, diverging from the previous NFT-driven surge.
General-purpose EVM chains are evolving towards specific use cases, defying their original design intentions. Yet, the growing number of smart contracts that elude simple categorization points to a landscape ripe for experimentation and diversification at the protocol level.