Ethereum’s on-chain activity has accelerated over the past month, and data points to first-time users as the main driver. Glassnode’s month-over-month activity retention view shows a sharp increase in the “new” cohort, while activity from existing addresses trends lower.
Glassnode data shows that first-time interacting addresses over the past 30 days increased from just over 4 million to around 8 million. The same retention metric tracks whether newcomers continue to transact after their first activity.
Etherscan network data also shows strong participation. Daily transactions reached 2,812,123 on Thursday, January 15, 2026, which marked the highest daily total on the explorer’s transaction chart.
Daily active addresses also rose around that period. A third-party series based on Etherscan lists 1.075 million daily active addresses for January 15, 2026, up from 962,044 the prior day and 506,531 one year earlier.
Low costs have supported higher transaction frequency. Etherscan’s charts page lists an average transaction fee of about $0.16 over the past 24 hours, alongside 2,812,123 transactions in the same window.
The gas environment has also remained unusually light in mid-January. Etherscan’s gas tracker showed sub-$0.01 estimates for standard transfers at the time of its snapshot, with featured actions such as swaps near $0.05 and bridging near $0.02.
Stablecoins have grown with that fee backdrop. Token Terminal-based figures cited in market data feeds indicate Ethereum stablecoin transfer volume exceeded $8 trillion in a single quarter, which points to heavy settlement demand on the network.
As execution shifts to layer-2 networks, the Ethereum mainnet continues to anchor settlement and security. That structure allows higher throughput without pushing base-layer fees higher during periods of rising activity.
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Vitalik Buterin has framed Ethereum scaling around safer throughput gains. In a January 2026 post on X, he said increasing bandwidth is safer than reducing latency and pointed to PeerDAS and zero-knowledge proofs as core tools for scale.
He has also tied scaling to decentralization incentives. Buterin has warned that node economics can pull operators toward crowded locations over time, which can weaken decentralization if builders ignore the pressure.
Furthermore, staking data has moved higher at the same time. Market dashboards and summaries show staked ETH near 36 million, which sits close to 30% of the circulating supply and implies a staked value above $118 billion at recent prices.
Validator queue data has also signaled fresh demand for staking. Several trackers show an entry queue above 2.3 million ETH and a low exit queue, which indicates more validators seek activation than exit.
According to CoinMarketCap data, Ether currently trades near $3,305 and is down about 1.4% over the past 24 hours.