According to a report by CoinDesk on April 17th, BlockBeats reported that the Ethereum network processed 200.4 million transactions in the first quarter of 2026, marking the first time it has surpassed 200 million transactions in a single quarter. This represents a significant 43% increase compared to the 145 million transactions in the fourth quarter of 2025, exhibiting a clear U-shaped recovery curve. Quarterly transaction counts bottomed out at approximately 90 million in 2023, then traded sideways between 100 million and 120 million transactions throughout 2024, only beginning to recover quarter by quarter in mid-2025. However, there is a clear divergence between the price of Ethereum's native token, ETH, and on-chain activity—ETH is currently trading at approximately $2,328, a drop of over 50% from its all-time high of nearly $5,000 in August 2025.
The growth in transaction volume mainly comes from two directions: First, Layer 2 networks such as Base and Arbitrum write data to the Ethereum base layer through settlement and bridging operations after processing user transactions; second, the total supply of stablecoins on Ethereum has reached a record high of $180 billion, accounting for about 60% of the global stablecoin market.
Some analysts have raised risks: The Dencun upgrade significantly reduces Layer 2 data costs, leading to a decrease in revenue per transaction for the Ethereum base layer. Increased transaction volume may not directly translate into a corresponding increase in ETH burning or the value held by ETH holders. Furthermore, the continuously rising proportion of bot activity in stablecoin on-chain transactions also raises concerns about the quality of this growth.
