Ethereum recorded record daily transactions while average fees fell to recent lows in the past two weeks, driven by higher throughput and cheaper Layer 2 data posting. Data shows transactions have climbed past prior cycle peaks.
According to Blockscout, average daily transactions rose from about 1.8 million to 2.1 million. Dosh said “reflects the success of Ethereum’s modular scaling architecture, particularly EIP-4844 and its recent blob-capacity upgrade, which allows Layer 2s to post more data to mainnet at far lower cost,”
Most on-chain activity came from stablecoin transfers, led by Tether’s USDT at roughly twice the volume of Circle’s USDC. Low gas fees support persistent payment use across Ethereum-based rails.
About 30% of all Ether is now staked, and the validator exit queue has fallen to zero (Ed. note: this indicates reduced immediate withdrawal pressure). Validator Queue data shows exits dropped from a September 2025 peak of 2.67 million ETH to zero, while roughly 2.6 million ETH is queued to enter staking.
Co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned about adding many niche features to the protocol, saying “One of my fears with Ethereum protocol development is that we can be too eager to add new features to meet highly specific needs, even if those features bloat the protocol or add entire new types of interacting components or complicated cryptography as critical dependencies,”
