Ethereum Surges to Record Transactions As Fees Plummet — Modular Upgrades Unlock Scale

Ethereum is seeing record activity as transaction costs slide and network conditions stabilize — a sign that recent technical upgrades are finally unlocking more throughput without the old fee pain. On-chain trackers show daily transactions have climbed past the peaks seen in the 2021 cycle, while average fees have dropped to multi-year lows — now just a fraction of their historic averages. Blockscout data shows average daily transactions increased roughly 14% over the past two weeks, from about 1.8 million to 2.1 million. Why fees are falling as usage rises Network engineers and analysts point to Ethereum’s modular scaling work — especially EIP-4844 and the recent blob-capacity upgrade — as the primary reason. These changes let Layer 2 rollups post bulk data to Ethereum much more cheaply, moving large amounts of transaction data off the main chain while keeping it verifiable. As Dosh, head of BD and growth at Blockscout, put it to Decrypt, the result is a simultaneous rise in throughput and fall in cost that “reflects the success of Ethereum’s modular scaling architecture.” What’s driving the traffic Much of the activity is payment- and stablecoin-related. Blockscout’s analysis shows stablecoin transfers dominate, with Tether’s USDT moving at roughly twice the volume of Circle’s USDC. With gas prices low, this payments activity appears durable and dovetails with broader mainstream payment integrations building on Ethereum rails. Staking and validator health Network stability shows up in staking metrics as well. The validator exit queue — the backlog of validators waiting to leave the proof-of-stake system — has fallen to zero, signaling there isn’t a mass rush to withdraw. Validator exits have decreased from a September 2025 peak of 2.67 million ETH to zero, while about 2.6 million ETH is currently queued to enter staking, the highest level since July 2023. Roughly 30% of all ETH is now staked. Because exits must be signaled and are deliberately delayed to protect security, changes in the queue are closely watched as a gauge of validator confidence. “Virtually no validator exits suggest a balance between operating costs and staking rewards,” Dosh said, adding that it implies stakers are accumulating and keeping capital committed for future flexibility. A caution from Vitalik Even as metrics point to sustainable scaling, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned that long-term health will depend on resisting protocol bloat. “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,” he wrote. Dosh framed that as a governance concern: every mature software system gathers complexity, and Ethereum is no different. The network can scale sustainably, they said, but it must also “simplify sustainably to preserve long-term resilience and agility.” Bottom line Ethereum’s recent upgrades appear to be delivering: higher transaction volumes, lower costs, and steady validator behavior. The challenge ahead is to keep building capacity without letting the protocol become overly complex — a tension that will shape the next phase of Ethereum’s evolution. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news