Key Points
- Ethereum daily active addresses surpassed 700,000, reaching record highs in February 2026.
- ETH price lags despite rising network usage and increased staking activity.
While the broader crypto market remains under pressure, with Bitcoin and Ethereum unable to reclaim key resistance levels, Ethereum’s on-chain activity has climbed to historic highs.
In February 2026, daily active addresses on the network surpassed 700,000, exceeding levels seen during the 2021 bull market, according to CryptoQuant.
Despite this surge in usage, ETH has declined roughly 30% over the past six months and is trading near $2,000.
The divergence between network performance and market valuation has widened compared to previous cycles.
Ethereum Network Activity Reaches New Records
Smart contract calls exceeded 40 million per day in February, while token transfers driven by internal contract interactions also reached record levels, based on CryptoQuant data.
The increase has been linked to broad adoption across decentralized finance, stablecoins, and automated protocol interactions rather than a single event.
Daily active addresses averaged 837,200 on a 30-day moving basis, representing an 82% increase from five years ago and a more than tenfold rise over the past decade.
New wallet creation climbed to approximately 284,800 per day, up 64% compared with five years earlier.
More than 37.7 million ETH is currently staked, according to CryptoQuant, reducing circulating supply while liquid staking solutions preserve user liquidity.
Price Lags Behind On-Chain Momentum
The rise in activity has not translated into sustained price support, as Ethereum’s one-year change in realized capitalization has turned negative.
Exchange inflows have increased relative to Bitcoin, a pattern commonly associated with elevated selling pressure.
Analysis from CryptoQuant indicates that recent data clusters around high usage but comparatively subdued price levels, suggesting that incremental activity growth now has less impact on valuation than in prior cycles.
In both 2018 and 2021, expanding on-chain participation coincided with price appreciation, but that correlation appears weaker in the current environment.
At the same time, a large Ethereum holder has reduced significant ETH positions during this period of peak activity, adding to downward pressure.
Data from DefiLlama shows Ethereum generated approximately $10.3 million in transaction fees over the past 30 days, ranking behind Tron and Solana in fee revenue.
Base, the layer-2 network associated with Coinbase, generated roughly three times the protocol revenue of Ethereum’s base layer during the same timeframe.
This dynamic highlights how scaling solutions built on Ethereum may be capturing value that would otherwise accrue to the main network.
