Key figures

• Daily Ethereum mainnet transactions rose 54% to 2.17 million.
• The median fee averaged 3.5 cents, down from 35 cents.
• Total fees paid in ETH fell 58%.
• ETH supply grew by about 842,000 coins.

The activity and cost figures come from Ethereum Institutional’s State of the Ledger report, published on November 5. The fee and supply totals are Coindoo’s own calculations based on Coin Metrics data.

A busier chain generated 93,000 fewer ETH in fees

Ethereum Institutional is a nonprofit founded this year with anchor funding from ETH treasury companies BitMine and SharpLink, Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin and Mihai Alisie. The organization says its report does not speak for the Ethereum Foundation.

According to the report, Ethereum mainnet averaged 2.17 million transactions per day from January through October, 54% more than during the same months of 2025. Over the same period, the average daily median fee fell from 35 cents to 3.5 cents.

Coindoo totaled Coin Metrics’ daily transaction and total-fee data for the same 10-month periods in both years. Mainnet processed 659 million transactions, up from 426.8 million, confirming the report’s growth figure. Total fees, including burned amounts, declined from 160,676 ETH to 67,665 ETH. That represents a 57.9% decrease, or roughly 93,000 ETH.

The decline was even larger on a per-transaction basis. The average transaction paid about 0.00038 ETH in fees in 2025 and approximately 0.00010 ETH this year, a drop of roughly 73%. A 54% increase in transaction volume did not offset a per-transaction fee that fell by almost three-quarters. A similar gap between activity and income appeared in Robinhood, Coinbase and Circle’s third quarter, as previously reported by Coindoo.

The report’s 90% figure measures a narrower metric: the dollar cost of a typical transaction at the median.

Blockspace capacity has outpaced demand

Under EIP-1559, each block has a gas target set at half its gas limit, with gas serving as the unit that measures transaction computation. The base fee rises when blocks operate above that target and declines when they operate below it.

Ethereum blocks now have a 60 million gas limit, double the 30 million limit in 2024. Ethereum Institutional reports that blocks are operating near their target. When blocks remain at the target, the base fee faces no upward pressure. Data from ultrasound.money puts the average base fee at 0.27 gwei (one-billionth of an ETH) in 2026 through mid-October, compared with 2.00 gwei throughout 2025.

Rollups—separate networks that execute transactions and post their data back to mainnet—provide another outlet for transaction activity. Since the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, rollups have posted data in blobs, a separate space with its own fee market under EIP-4844. Citing the Ethereum Foundation’s strawmap, the report says Fusaka increased the blob target from six to 14 per block and the maximum from nine to 21. Fusaka activated in December 2025.

Layer 2 networks averaged 23.3 million transactions per day this year, an 18% increase and roughly 10 times mainnet’s transaction count. In the 30 days through November 2, Base led with 8.3 million transactions per day, followed by Robinhood Chain with 6.9 million.

Despite that activity, blob fees have burned relatively little ETH. According to ultrasound.money, blob fees have destroyed about 4,700 ETH in total since March 2024.

Only the burned portion offsets issuance

Total fees and burned ETH are different measurements. Under the fee mechanism, the base fee is the portion that gets burned, while the tips users add go to validators, so only the burned portion offsets new ETH issuance. Ethereum’s fee documentation distinguishes how the payment is distributed.

The burn covers less than 3% of issuance

After the Merge in September 2022, Ethereum’s “ultrasound money” thesis held that ETH burning would exceed issuance and reduce the supply. Supply did fall for about 18 months, from October 2022 through April 2024, according to ultrasound.money.

March 2024 was the last month in which supply declined. That was also the month when Dencun moved rollup data into blobs. Ethereum’s supply rose back above its Merge-day level in February 2025.

Coin Metrics’ supply series shows that the increase continued this year. Supply rose from approximately 121.34 million ETH on December 31, 2025, to 122.18 million ETH on October 31, 2026. That was an increase of roughly 842,000 ETH, or 0.7%.

The pace has accelerated. In ultrasound.money’s monthly data, net additions from January through September reached 751,838 ETH, about 20% more than the 628,472 ETH added during the same months of 2025.

Two daily figures illustrate the difference between issuance and burning. During the 30 days through October 18, validators received about 2,966 new ETH per day. The total burn over the same 30-day period was 2,417 ETH, less than 3% of the ETH issued.

Net change in ETH supply by calendar year

• 2023: −343,945 ETH (−0.29%)
• 2024: +288,473 ETH (+0.24%)
• 2025: +866,413 ETH (+0.72%)
• 2026*: +804,368 ETH (+0.66%)

Teal marks a shrinking supply, while amber marks a growing supply. Years run from January 1 to January 1; *2026 runs through October 18. Source: ultrasound.money.

Staking turns supply growth into a transfer

Staked ETH reached 44.2 million on October 31, up from 33.3 million a year earlier, according to Ethereum Institutional, which derives the figure from Token Terminal data. As a share of circulating supply, staking increased from 27.6% to 36.1%. About one-third more ETH now supports network consensus.

Each additional staked coin reduces the reward allocated to the rest. Under Ethereum’s reward rules, total issuance grows with the square root of the amount of ETH staked. A larger staking pool therefore produces more ETH overall but a smaller return per coin.

The current 30-day rate is roughly 1.08 million ETH per year. Spread across about 43.8 million staked ETH, according to ultrasound.money’s count, that rate pays stakers close to 2.5% annually. The figure excludes tips, maximal extractable value, or MEV, and operator commissions.

This makes the year’s supply growth a redistribution between two groups of holders. A staker’s share of all ETH grows by about 1.7 percentage points per year, representing the yield minus supply growth. A holder who does not stake sees their share decline by roughly the rate of supply growth, which was 0.82% over the 365 days through October 19. User fees now do little to offset that shift.

Stablecoin transfers expanded on cheaper blockspace

Stablecoins moved $25.8 trillion across Ethereum mainnet from January through October, 61% more than a year earlier, the report said. The number of transfers rose 2.5 times to 463 million.

Those transfers increased during the same period that total fees fell by more than half. The expansion in stablecoin activity therefore took place on cheaper blockspace and did not restore the fee base.

The headline volume requires two adjustments. Transfers spike at the end of each quarter, meaning that comparisons are most meaningful across matching periods. Gross volume also includes bot activity and internal transfers. Visa’s onchain analytics filters out those activities; on that basis, mainnet stablecoin volume grew by about 50% in the year through September 30. That period differs from the report’s January-to-October measurement.

The case for cheap fees and the metric to watch

Ethereum Institutional reaches a different conclusion from the same data. With mainnet fees at a few cents and more than one-third of ETH staked, the report argues that account controls and confidentiality now deserve at least as much institutional attention as throughput and fees.

Low fees are also an explicit objective of the Ethereum Foundation’s roadmap. The roadmap targets a mainnet capable of running 1 billion gas per second and Layer 2 data capacity intended to keep rollup costs low. The design is based on demand for ETH as staking collateral, decentralized finance collateral and settlement money, rather than on high transaction fees.

The next upgrade would add more capacity. Ethereum Institutional expects Glamsterdam in early 2027, although no date has been confirmed. The upgrade is designed to support a proposed 200 million gas limit, up from 60 million today. The report notes that greater capacity could put further downward pressure on gas prices.

The Ethereum Foundation postponed the Hoodi testnet fork on October 22 to study a repricing change and has not announced a new date. Testnets such as Hoodi are where proposed changes are rehearsed before they reach mainnet. The delay was addressed in the Ethereum Foundation announcement.

The base fee is the figure that would test either interpretation of the data. Ultrasound.money estimates that the break-even point—where ETH burned would equal issuance at current gas use—is roughly 13.6 gwei. The 30-day average is about 0.37 gwei, more than 35 times lower.

Until Glamsterdam activates, the monthly net supply figure remains the relevant measure. It has ranged from approximately 74,000 to 90,000 ETH in every full month of 2026, showing whether demand for blockspace is closing the gap with issuance or whether capacity continues to outpace demand.

Source: Coindoo.