Ethereum’s network activity has reached all-time highs on several metrics, but the growth has failed to increase the price of ether or increase fee generation at the base layer.
A weekly report from analytics firm CryptoQuant released on March 10 found that daily active addresses on Ethereum approached 2 million in February 2026, surpassing highs seen during the 2021 bull market. Active addresses are unique blockchain wallet addresses that have sent or received a transaction within a specific time frame, such as in the last 24 hours.
Smart contract calls, or codes on the blockchain telling it to do something specific, have exceeded 40 million per day, and token transfers driven by internal contract interactions have also set records. The results indicate broad adoption of DeFi activity, stablecoins, and automated protocols, even as investment demand for ether has weakened.
The network’s record user activity generally bodes well for the market value of the blockchain’s native token. But this is not the case with Ethereum.
Its native token is down about 30% over the past six months, and the year-over-year change in Ethereum’s realized capitalization has turned negative, indicating net capital outflows from the market.
Exchange flow data from CryptoQuant shows that ether is moving across trading platforms at a faster rate than bitcoin, a pattern consistent with high selling pressure.
Focus on capital flows
CryptoQuant argued that capital flows, rather than network activity, now more effectively explain ETH price dynamics.
In previous cycles, particularly in 2018 and 2021, increased on-chain activity has coincided with rising prices. This relationship has weakened. The company’s dispersion analysis showed recent observations clustered at high activity levels but relatively low prices, suggesting that incremental growth in usage now has less explanatory power for Ether’s valuation.
The cost situation reinforces the disconnect. Data from DefiLlama shows that Ethereum generated around $10.3 million in transaction fees over the past 30 days, placing it third behind Tron with almost $25 million and Solana with around $20 million.
On the basis of income, the gap widens further. Ethereum ranked fifth in 30-day protocol revenue with $1.22 million, behind Tron as well as Polygon, Base and Solana. Base, an Ethereum layer 2 network built by Coinbase, generated approximately three times the revenue of the Ethereum protocol during the same period.
This disparity reflects the growing role of Ethereum’s layer 2 ecosystem. Networks such as Base and Polygon process large transaction volumes while paying relatively low settlement costs to the base chain, thereby distributing economic activity across the broader Ethereum ecosystem rather than concentrating it on the base layer.
Stablecoins remain a bright spot for adoption. Ethereum hosts about $162 billion in stablecoin supply, or about 52% of the global market, according to DefiLlama. Yet this activity has not translated into a proportional capture of the value of the ether itself.
Ethereum may be busier than ever, but the blockchain’s native asset captures less value created on top of it.
