Ethereum is absolutely crushing it on the fundamentals right now.
The network has been hitting multiple all-time highs in on-chain activity as we kick off 2026, driven by real usage rather than just hype. Here's the breakdown of what's happening:
Record-Breaking Daily TransactionsEthereum has surged past previous peaks, with reports of over 2.2 million transactions processed in a single day (building on the late-2025 record of ~2.23M on Dec 29).
Recent days in early January have consistently ranked among the highest ever, with 7-day averages pushing into new territory around 2M+.This is massive because it's not coming from congestion or speculation bubbles like in 2021—fees are staying super low (often under $1 on average, thanks to post-Dencun/Fusaka upgrades, bigger gas limits, and Layer 2 rollups handling the heavy lifting while settling back to L1).
Explosive Wallet & Address GrowthNew wallet creation hit an insane peak: Nearly 400,000 new addresses created in a single day (one Sunday in January clocked ~393.6K—the highest ever tracked).
Weekly averages are running at ~327K new wallets per day.
Active addresses have also spiked to multi-year highs (often 500K–700K+ daily), showing genuine user engagement.
This points to accelerating adoption in areas like:Stablecoin transfers
Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization
DeFi protocols
Institutional staking and settlement
Layer 2 networks are firing on all cylinders too, with combined throughput hitting new records (e.g., 5,600+ TPS in some reports).
Why This Matters (Especially with Price Lagging)The network is proving itself as serious global infrastructure—more people and institutions are actually using Ethereum than ever before, while gas fees remain cheap and the system scales smoothly. Historically, big activity spikes often happened near cycle tops with sky-high fees... but this time it's different: sustainable, utility-driven growth.
Many analysts are calling this a classic "usage first, price follows later" setup.
ETH might be undervalued relative to the on-chain momentum—settlement layers with this level of real demand don't stay mispriced forever.
Super bullish signal for the long term!
