On-Chain Activity and New Participants
The Ethereum network’s on-chain activity has gone up over the past month, with data pointing to an influx of first-time participants, per metrics published by blockchain analytics firm Glassnode on Friday.
Ethereum has witnessed a rise in new addresses interacting with the network by almost twice its level from 2025. Glassnode’s month-over-month activity retention chart showed a spike in a “new” cohort, pitting the uptrend against a slump in usage from existing addresses.
Since 2016, surges in usage came during times of bullish market cycles like the 2017 boom and the 2021 rally that took Ethereum to an all-time high. In many of those periods, retained and resurrected users accounted for a significant share of activity. However, the expansion is heavily skewed toward new wallets with a widening base layer in 2026.
Ethereum's Increased Welcoming Nature
According to market analysis platforms, Ethereum is garnering users interacting with the network for the first time, who are seen transacting more frequently than existing addresses. The interest seems to have been aided by Ether’s price climbing to the $3,300 level, amid a period of relative price stability after a volatile end to 2025 that swung its value to as low as $2,800.
Supporting the Glassnode findings, data from Etherscan shows that Ethereum’s active address count has more than doubled over the past year. The number of active wallets has risen from 410,000 to more than one million, while daily transaction counts climbed to a record 2.8 million on Thursday, a 125% compared with levels from a year earlier.
Modular Architecture and Scalability
Macroeconomics outlet Milk Road said Ethereum is transitioning toward a modular architecture where execution is being pushed outward, while settlement and security are anchored on the base layer. This structure has allowed activity to scale without overwhelming the core network, Milk Road’s analysts explained.
Technological Advancements and Future Growth
As reported by Cryptopolitan last week, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said increasing bandwidth is significantly safer than reducing latency for the chain. He propounded that Ethereum can grow exponentially through Peer-to-Peer Data Availability Sampling, known as PeerDAS, and Zero-Knowledge Proofs, or ZKPs.
Buterin compared pre-sharding and post-sharding conditions, noting that the numbers have become far more favorable than in earlier projections. According to the Ethereum Foundation co-founder, there is no inherent barrier preventing extreme scale from coexisting with decentralization on the network.
Economic Realities of Staking and Decentralization
When asked about the economic realities of staking, he said that if operating a node outside business-crowded areas like New York reduces revenue by even 10%, more participants will pull themselves toward centralized locations over time, which would undermine decentralization if not carefully managed.
"Ethereum itself must pass the walkaway test, and so we cannot build a blockchain that depends on constant social re-juggling to ensure decentralization. Economics cannot handle the entire load, but it must handle most," Buterin said.