What To Know:
- Ethereum has seen a sharp rise in on-chain activity since the Fusaka upgrade, with new address creation up about 110% and nearly 292,000 addresses added daily.
- Data shows an increase in mid-term holders who entered between July and October 2025, a group that could add selling pressure if prices recover toward break-even levels.
- Technical upgrades, including PeerDAS and progress on ZK-EVM, alongside record stablecoin transfer volumes above $8 trillion in Q4.
Ethereum’s network activity has spiked up sharply following the Fusaka upgrade rolled out on December 3, 2025, with on-chain data pointing to a renewed wave of participation. The number of new Ethereum addresses has climbed by roughly 110% since the upgrade, adding close to 292,000 fresh addresses each day.
Ethereum Network Activity Spikes Up
Market analysts see the surge as a sign of rapid user onboarding. Seasonal trading patterns might be playing a role, but structural changes introduced by recent upgrades are also shaping up behavior. Together, they suggest that Ethereum’s base layer is seeing increased engagement rather than short-lived speculative spikes.
Holder behavior offers additional context. Data from the HODL Waves indicator shows a noticeable rise in mid-term holders, defined as investors holding ether for three to six months. Many of these participants entered the market between July and October 2025, a period marked by price volatility and shifting expectations around Ethereum’s roadmap.
Early July entrants are now sitting on unrealized gains, while those who bought later in the summer remain underwater. Analysts warn that a sustained price recovery could prompt selling pressure from this cohort, particularly if ether revisits levels that allow recent buyers to exit at break-even.
Ethereum was trading at $3,157.66 at the time of reporting, up 0.5% over the past 24 hours. The modest price increase comes as technical developments regain attention across the ecosystem, including public commentary from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
Buterin has stated that Ethereum is nearing a practical resolution of the long-discussed blockchain trilemma, the challenge of balancing decentralization, security, and scalability within a single network. He pointed to two upgrades, PeerDAS and ZK-EVM, as foundational to this progress.
PeerDAS was activated on Ethereum’s mainnet in 2025 and is already contributing to improved data availability. ZK-EVM, while still undergoing security refinements, has reached what Buterin described as production-level performance. Limited deployment across the network is expected to begin in 2026.
According to Buterin, Ethereum’s next phase will focus on safely increasing throughput while maintaining its decentralized structure. Planned changes include higher gas limits, adjustments to state architecture, and expanded use of zero-knowledge proof systems for block validation. He stressed that these plans are grounded in code that is already live or actively being tested.
ZK-EVMs remain in an early operational phase. While performance benchmarks have been met, further security fastening is required before they can be fully relied upon. Buterin has rolled out a four-year timeline for ZK-EVMs to become a core component of Ethereum’s validation process.
In a series of posts, he mapped out a gradual rollout between 2026 and 2030. The roadmap includes incremental gas limit increases, repricing mechanisms, structural changes to execution payloads, and a longer-term shift toward ZK-EVM-based block validation.
Buterin also reflected on Ethereum’s decade-long engineering effort to address data availability and scalability, tracing the origins of this work back to early research published in 2017. He described the current stage as the result of sustained technical development rather than a sudden breakthrough.
Apart from these protocol-level developments, Ethereum’s stablecoin activity has reached a new milestone. Stablecoin transfer volumes on the network exceeded $8 trillion in the fourth quarter, setting a historical record and reinforcing Ethereum’s role as the primary settlement layer for dollar-pegged assets.
Also Read: Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin: Expect 5x Gas Limit, 5x Gas Cost Ahead
