Active users on the Ethereum network have overtaken major Layer 2 users as long-term development strategies begin to repay.
According to data from Nansen, the variety of lively addresses on Ethereum exceeded 791,000 on Monday, higher than the network's major L2 players, including Base, Arbitrum and Optimism.
Daily average transaction costs have also reached latest lows. On Monday, average transaction fees were just $0.15. Just a yr ago, the common fee for a transaction on Ethereum was $11.
These Ethereum utility metrics precede developers’ ambitious plans to make the network bulletproof.
Ethereum has more day by day lively addresses than outstanding L2s. Source: Nansen
Active addresses on Ethereum overtake L2s, fees cost pennies
Over the last yr, the variety of lively addresses on the Ethereum network has increased by 71%, in comparison with 460,000 registered accounts a yr ago.
Daily transactions on Ethereum have also reached an all-time high and are cheaper than ever. On Tuesday, there have been 2.1 million transactions on the Ethereum blockchain with a mean transaction fee of $0.15.
Daily transactions on Ethereum are at record highs. Source: Etherscan
Not way back, transactions on Ethereum were notoriously expensive. In late 2021 to mid-2022, as decentralized finance exploded and enthusiasm for non-fungible tokens peaked, some users reported gas fees of over $200.
This raised questions on how useful Ethereum could really be. Then in 2023, L2 networks exploded to scale the network as big players like Coinbase jumped on board. The crypto exchange launched its own L2, Base, and opened the mainnet to users in August of the identical yr.
Last yr saw two major upgrades for Ethereum. In May, the Pectra upgrade increased the capability of Blobs – a tool for storing transaction data. More blob storage helps Rollups publish transaction data more cheaply and might contribute to lower fees.
Blob capability was further increased with the Fusaka upgrade activated on December 3, 2025. Fusaka also introduced Peer Data Availability Sampling, making a system where validators didn’t need to download entire blobs but could use small samples to confirm transactions.
In addition to lower fees and more addresses, developers at the moment are more more likely to select Ethereum as their settlement layer. According to Token Terminal, the number of recent smart contracts created and published on Ethereum reached an all-time high of 8.7 million within the fourth quarter of 2025.
This indicator of future network activity comes at a time of accelerating competition between Layer 1 corporations equivalent to Ethereum, Tron, Solana and BNB Chain. Solana and BNB Chain are the industry's leading networks by transactions and lively addresses, largely as a consequence of their high throughput and recognition in retail and memecoin activities.
As the race heats up, Ethereum developers are searching for ways to future-proof the network.
Ethereum for 100 years
On Monday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said on X that the network needs to succeed in a degree where developers can eventually quit.
He said that developing applications “shouldn’t be possible on a base layer that itself relies on ongoing updates from a vendor to stay usable.” Buterin said that the blockchain “will need to have the properties that we seek in Ethereum’s applications. Therefore, Ethereum itself must pass the walkaway test.”
The network remains to be a good distance from that time, and Buterin suggested plenty of key aspects to get it “to a degree where Ethereum’s value proposition doesn’t necessarily rely on features that aren’t already built into the protocol.”
These included:
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Full quantum resistance.
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Architecture that may be expanded 1000’s of times to attain sufficient scalability.
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State architecture that may last for many years.
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A general purpose account model.
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A proof-of-stake model that “can last for many years and remain decentralized.”
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A block formation model that resists centralization.
Buterin added that Ethereum developers should “check no less than one in all these boxes, ideally several,” yearly.
Big changes are coming to Ethereum in 2026. The upcoming Glamsterdam fork will bring perfect parallel processing to the network and may even increase the gas limit from the present 60 million to 200 million. This also further increases the blob size.
Perfect parallel processing will supposedly increase transaction bandwidth and enable larger block sizes without increased gas limits.
The upcoming upgrades aim to extend Ethereum’s throughput to 10,000 transactions per second. Source: Growthepie
As Ethereum continues to make network upgrades, data shows more activity on its L1. The reward could soon be a network that developers can move away from and that future generations of app developers can construct on.
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