Miner activity

Finally, miner activity is a great measure of the power behind the technology. The more miners join the network, the stronger it becomes, which, in turn, increases its decentralization reaching record high hashrates.

Ethereum started in 2015 with just 11 GH/s in hashrate. That is extremely low, and it's expected from any new blockchain. However, that number hasn't stopped growing and now we have about 180,000 GH/s as of January 1st, 2019. 

Take a look at this screenshot of how the Ethereum's network hashrate has been increasing consistently to clearly appreciate the relation between price and adoption:

You can see in the preceding chart that the growth has been consistent until September 2018, where it fell drastically while it recovers slowly. By interpreting this data, we can come to the conclusion that it's slowly being accepted by miners that believe in the technology, especially in recent times, where the difficulty has increased while rewards have been reduced. This type of crypto winter is still going surprisingly strong, supported by people that will mine it even at a loss. It's a great indicator of how much people believe in the underlying system.