ETH August 2026 Update: Flows Recover, Fundamentals Don't

Onchain Metrics

Many of Ethereum's metrics were relatively flat in August. L2 fees (+6.6%), tokenized RWA value (+2.1%), application revenue (+1.6%), stablecoin supply (+0.2%), contracts deployed (-2.9%) and total transactions (-3.2%) all moved within a few percent, while unique active addresses grew a more meaningful 7.7%. An exception was network REV, which rose 28% to $12.6 million (a bounce off July's historic low rather than a break in the broader downtrend). Stablecoin transfers were the only notable decline, falling 13.5% to 44.7 million and interrupting the steady climb seen through the first half of the year. 

Ethereum spot DEX volume rose to approximately $34 billion in August 2026, up ~12% from July and ending three consecutive months of declines, though still down ~64% from the September 2025 level of roughly $93 billion. Stablecoin swaps remained the largest category at ~$16 billion but fell 11% MoM, while ETH–stablecoin pairs grew 14% to $8.4 billion. The majority of the increase came from volatile pairs: foreign tokens jumped 163% to $5.7 billion and project tokens nearly doubled to $1.7 billion. This suggests that August's recovery was concentrated in volatile pairs rather than stablecoin swaps.PropAMMs are the dominant venue on Solana yet still represent only ~3% of monthly volume on Ethereum, up from ~1% in July. Volume in this segment more than tripled from approximately $288 million in July to $935 million in August. Fermiswap drove essentially all of the increase, growing 269% to roughly $896 million and lifting its share of propAMM activity from 84% to 96%, while Kipseli contributed approximately $40 million (down 11%).

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