How Ethereum Hit Record Transactions While Fees Fell to Around $0.21

Much of this growth has been driven by stablecoin transfers and Layer‑2 networks that settle data on Ethereum, expanding the ecosystem’s overall transaction volume without overloading the base layer.

Why transaction fees fell despite higher usage

Historically, Ethereum fees rose sharply when activity increased. Recent upgrades changed that dynamic by expanding the network’s data capacity and improving how rollups interact with the main chain.

These improvements allow Ethereum to process more transactions indirectly through Layer‑2 networks while keeping the base layer relatively efficient.

The result: higher overall activity across the ecosystem but lower average costs per transaction.

The Pectra upgrade: improving accounts, validators, and scaling

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade, activated on May 7, 2025, introduced a set of improvements affecting both the execution and consensus layers.

Important changes included:

• Account abstraction via EIP‑7702, enabling externally owned accounts to temporarily gain smart‑contract functionality and enabling features like gas sponsorship and bundled transactions.
• Validator improvements through EIP‑7251, raising the maximum effective validator balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, which simplifies validator management and reduces operational overhead for large stakers.
• Higher blob throughput, increasing the data capacity available for Layer‑2 rollups posting transaction data to Ethereum.

Because rollups rely on Ethereum to publish compressed transaction data, expanding blob capacity significantly lowered the cost of posting that data—helping reduce user fees across the ecosystem.

The Fusaka upgrade: scaling rollups even further

The Fusaka upgrade, activated on Dec. 3, 2025, pushed Ethereum’s rollup‑centric scaling strategy further.

Its most important feature was Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS).

PeerDAS allows network nodes to verify large amounts of rollup data by sampling pieces of it instead of downloading everything. This dramatically lowers the bandwidth and storage requirements for validators while enabling Ethereum to handle much larger amounts of rollup data.

Fusaka also introduced:

• Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks, which allow Ethereum to increase blob capacity between major hard forks.
• Gas‑limit increases, expanding how much computation and transaction data can fit in a block.

Together, these changes made it easier for rollups to scale while maintaining decentralization and manageable hardware requirements for node operators.

The rollup-centric scaling model

The upgrades reinforced Ethereum’s long‑term design philosophy: the base layer provides security and data availability, while most user transactions happen on Layer‑2 networks.

Rollups compress many transactions into a single batch and post the data to Ethereum. Because upgrades like Pectra and Fusaka expanded the data space available for those batches, more activity can flow through the system without dramatically raising gas prices.

This architecture is a major reason Ethereum can now handle record transaction volumes while average fees remain relatively low.

What the Glamsterdam upgrade aims to achieve

The next major step on Ethereum’s roadmap is the Glamsterdam upgrade, which focuses more directly on improving Layer‑1 performance.

According to Ethereum’s roadmap, Glamsterdam aims to:

• Reorganize how the network processes transactions
• Improve how Ethereum manages its expanding state database
• Update block production and verification mechanisms

The goal is higher throughput and lower gas costs on the base layer itself, complementing the rollup‑driven scaling strategy already underway.

Challenges facing Ethereum’s outlook

Despite the network’s strong usage metrics, Ethereum faces several uncertainties.

Leadership changes and researcher departures have drawn attention in 2026. Multiple reports indicate that several senior contributors and researchers—including Tomasz Stańczak, Josh Stark, Carl Beek, and Julian Ma—have left the Ethereum Foundation amid restructuring.

There is also a noticeable gap between network usage and market performance.

Even as Ethereum recorded record transaction volumes in early 2026, ETH’s price remained more than 50% below its 2025 peak, raising questions about how value from network activity ultimately accrues to the token itself.

The bigger picture

Ethereum’s latest metrics show that the network is entering a new scaling phase.

Major upgrades like Pectra and Fusaka improved validator efficiency, expanded rollup data capacity, and strengthened Ethereum’s modular architecture. Those changes helped push activity to record levels while keeping fees historically low.

With Glamsterdam and future roadmap upgrades targeting deeper Layer‑1 improvements, Ethereum’s long‑term goal remains the same: dramatically increase throughput without sacrificing decentralization or security.

Whether the ecosystem can maintain that momentum—and translate network growth into stronger market performance—will shape Ethereum’s next chapter.