The Ethereum network processed significantly more transactions in 2026 while collecting far less in fees, according to the State of the Ledger report from Ethereum Institutional published on November 5 and supplemented by Coindoo’s own analysis of Coin Metrics data.
Daily mainnet transactions averaged 2.17 million from January through October, a 54% increase from the same period in 2025. However, the average daily median fee fell from 35 cents to 3.5 cents. In ETH terms, total mainnet fees dropped from 160,676 ETH to 67,665 ETH, a decline of approximately 57.9%, or about 93,000 ETH. On a per-transaction basis, the average fee fell about 73%, from 0.00038 ETH to 0.00010 ETH.
The sharp fee reduction reflects a capacity expansion that outpaced demand. Blocks now carry a 60 million gas limit, double the 30 million of 2024, and the average base fee fell to 0.27 gwei through mid-October 2026 compared with 2.00 gwei across 2025. Following the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, rollups began posting data in blobs under EIP-4844. The Fusaka upgrade, activated in December 2025, raised the blob target from 6 to 14 per block and the maximum from 9 to 21.
Layer 2 networks averaged 23.3 million daily transactions this year, up 18% and roughly ten times mainnet’s count. Over the 30 days to November 2, Base led with 8.3 million daily transactions, followed by Robinhood Chain at 6.9 million. Yet blob fees have burned only about 4,700 ETH in total since March 2024, according to ultrasound.money.
The burn now covers less than 3% of issuance. In the 30 days to October 18, validators received about 2,966 new ETH per day, while the entire 30-day burn totaled just 2,417 ETH. Coin Metrics data shows ETH supply rose from about 121.34 million on December 31, 2025, to 122.18 million on October 31, 2026, an increase of roughly 842,000 ETH, or 0.7%. Net additions from January to September reached 751,838 ETH, about 20% more than the 628,472 ETH added in the same months of 2025.
Staking has turned supply growth into a redistribution between stakers and non-stakers. Staked ETH reached 44.2 million on October 31, up from 33.3 million a year earlier, lifting staking’s share of circulating supply from 27.6% to 36.1%. A staker’s share of all ETH grows by about 1.7 percentage points a year, while a non-staker’s share shrinks by roughly 0.82% annually as user fees do little to offset issuance.
Stablecoin transfers also grew on cheap block space, moving $25.8 trillion across mainnet from January to October, 61% more than a year earlier, with the number of transfers rising 2.5 times to 463 million. For supply to stabilize, the base fee would need to climb to about 13.6 gwei, more than 35 times the recent 30-day average of 0.37 gwei. Ethereum Institutional argues that with mainnet fees at a few cents and over a third of ETH staked, account controls and confidentiality now deserve as much institutional attention as throughput and fees. The Ethereum Foundation’s roadmap targets 1 billion gas per second, and the next upgrade, Glamsterdam, is expected in early 2027 with a proposed 200 million gas limit that could put additional downward pressure on gas prices.
