Ethereum January 2026 Update

Fundamentals

Ethereum’s Real Economic Value (REV) rebounded to roughly $21M (up ~50% MoM), despite the increase in gas limit and the resulting drop in median transaction fees. 

This increase in REV stemmed from a material increase in onchain activity. In fact, as shown below, Ethereum registered over 70 million transactions in January, smashing its previous record of 51.7 million. Notably, a material portion of this activity (transaction count and active addresses) may be from poison attacks. Ethereum also saw an all-time high in monthly active addresses of 25.4 million (surpassing the 17.1 million users recorded in December 2025). This milestone was largely thanks to new accounts coming to Ethereum, which was also an all-time high of 10.3 million (as shown below). 

Despite the increase in onchain activity, Ethereum’s share of total network revenue (all sources of income) remained relatively low (11%). While Ethereum remained one of the larger individual contributors, its relative position continued to erode as revenue increasingly concentrated on alternative execution layers and high-throughput venues. Hyperliquid maintained its lead for another month (30%), capturing the largest share of network revenue, while Solana (21%) also recovered thanks to more onchain activity as well.