According to data compiled by Nansen, several of the most important blockchain networks processed more transactions in December whilst user fees fell. This is an indication that recent scaling expansions are increasing capability and easing competition for block space.
Data from Nansen showed that Bitcoin, Tron, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche and The Open Network (TON) saw a rise in transactions in comparison with the previous month, while fee income fell sharply over the identical period.
Despite a 57% drop in fee income, Ethereum transactions increased by 16%. Polygon showed the same divergence: transaction numbers increased by 82% while fees fell by 47%. Arbitrum and Avalanche also showed a really notable pattern with increasing transactions and decreasing fees.
Tron, Bitcoin and TON saw more modest transaction growth of 0.6%, 7.7% and seven.9%, respectively. However, these chains also saw a decline in fee revenue, reinforcing the overall trend of reducing blockspace pressure on the networks.
The trends suggest a structural shift in the best way blockchains handle demand. Scaling upgrades, rollups, and cheaper execution environments expanded capability without causing congestion or bidding wars for inclusion.
Blockchain addresses, transactions and fee data for the last 30 days. Source: Nansen
According to Nansen's artificial intelligence help section, the share change figures will not be strict month-to-month comparisons, but reasonably shifts relative to recent activity baselines.
As a result, sharp reversals or outflows can register as declines of greater than 100%, representing a net negative flow of activity momentum reasonably than “negative transactions” within the truest sense of the word.
Transactions are increasing as fee pressure on major networks eases
On November 27, Ethereum increased its block gas limit to 60 million, allowing more transactions and contract calls to suit into each block, reducing congestion.
The effect was compounded in December by the Fusaka upgrade, which introduced PeerDAS to dramatically expand data availability and reduce the price of rollups, reducing overall fee pressure whilst activity increased.
Polygon showed the same pattern after launching its Madhugiri hard fork in early December. As Cointelegraph previously reported, the upgrade reduced consensus time to 1 second and aimed to extend throughput by as much as 33% while making gas-heavy operations more efficient and predictable.
The network positioned the upgrades around stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization (RWA), which are inclined to generate more frequent, lower-urgency transactions that increase volume without driving up fees.
Meanwhile, Avalanche's performance appears to be the results of a mixture of ecosystem activity.
Nansen Research's Avalanche Ecosystem Report showed that the network's transaction growth was driven by stablecoin payments, institutional settlement, and consumer platforms similar to ticketing and gaming.
These use cases produce high throughput but little competition for block space, so transactions increase while fees decrease.
Meanwhile, Arbitrum's pattern reflects the economics of rollup scaling. The network batches transactions off-chain and sends compressed data to Ethereum, allowing transaction volumes to grow without proportional fee increases.
Its fee market design separates execution costs from Ethereum call data costs, dampening fee volatility even under higher utilization.
Not all networks shared the identical divergence
While several major blockchains saw higher transactions while fees fell, others concurrently saw a decline in activity and fee income, reflecting a calmer on-chain environment over the past 30 days.
The BNB chain saw a pointy decline: transactions fell by 79% and costs fell by 14%.
Base and HyperEVM saw a few of the steepest drops in activity. Base transactions fell 75% while fee income fell 63%. HyperEVM followed the same pattern: transactions fell 119% and costs fell 46%, indicating lower short-term usage in December.
Solana remained the busiest network with 1.7 billion transactions; even that result represented a 21% decline from the previous month, in response to Nansen. Fee income also fell by 17%.
Solana transactions within the last 180 days. Source: Nansen
These synchronized declines are according to general crypto market conditions. According to CoinGecko, the overall crypto market cap fluctuated between $2.9 and $3.1 trillion in December.
At the identical time, as prices, volatility and capital rotation continued to stagnate, on-chain activity on the networks cooled.
