User activity on the Chainlink network has surged sharply. Such levels were last recorded about eight months ago.
The growth began after some DeFi projects started abandoning LayerZero in favor of CCIP from Chainlink, which is used for interaction between different blockchains.
Why Activity on the Chainlink Network Has Surged
Analysts at Santiment noticed a strong spike in activity on the Chainlink network. On May 9, the number of active addresses exceeded 282,000, and the next day the figure remained above 264,000. Similar activity was last observed in the fall of last year.
Chainlink active addresses. Source: Santiment/X
One of the reasons was a major hack for $292 million that occurred on April 18. At that time, attackers withdrew about 116,500 rsETH through infrastructure related to the Kelp DAO bridge, which operated via LayerZero.
After this attack, many projects began to pay closer attention to the security of cross-chain solutions. Later, Kelp DAO announced that it was moving to CCIP from Chainlink.
A few weeks later, Solv Protocol also reported transferring more than $700 million in tokenized bitcoin to the CCIP infrastructure.
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According to Santiment, these events may have driven the increase in activity on the Chainlink network.
According to analysts, major DeFi projects are gradually moving away from LayerZero toward the Chainlink ecosystem. This has led to an increase in the number of transactions and interactions with smart contracts.
The company separately noted that the current growth in activity looks more like real network usage rather than typical speculation around the token.
Previously, similar spikes in network activity often occurred before more sustained growth in the price of LINK, rather than before short-term pumps.
At the same time, purchases by large holders have also increased. Over the past 30 days, wallets with balances from 100,000 to 10 million LINK have bought nearly 33 million tokens.
In addition, over the past five weeks, investors have withdrawn about 13.5 million LINK from centralized exchanges. Usually, such movements indicate growing demand and decreasing selling pressure.
