Ethereum’s principal blockchain simply dealt with extra each day exercise than its sooner and cheaper facet networks. ETH worth barely moved in the course of the spike, which suggests merchants noticed this as a utilization story relatively than a buying and selling occasion. It comes at a time when decrease charges are pulling folks again to Ethereum’s principal chain after years of visitors drifting to smaller networks.
Why Ethereum Is Busier Than Its Aspect Networks
Ethereum has a principal street, known as the mainnet, and smaller facet roads often known as Layer-2 networks. Names like Arbitrum and Base fall into that group. They course of transactions cheaply after which ship the outcomes again to Ethereum for safety.
Earlier this month, exercise on the mainnet jumped. Every day energetic wallets climbed shut to 1 million and briefly touched 1.3 million on January 16, in response to Token Terminal. That put Ethereum forward of its largest facet networks for the primary time in a protracted whereas.
Return to Mainnet@ethereum L1 outranks all main L2s by way of each day energetic addresses.
Fascinating. pic.twitter.com/Nk7O5adWA5
— Token Terminal
(@tokenterminal) January 22, 2026
Energetic wallets present folks really utilizing the community to ship cash, commerce, or use apps, so this type of transfer factors to actual habits relatively than worth watching.
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Decrease Charges Are Pulling Individuals Again
The rise adopted December’s Fusaka improve, which lowered transaction prices and made sending ETH and stablecoins reasonably priced once more. It’s just like tolls dropping on a busy street, visitors returns rapidly.
Stablecoins drove a giant share of the exercise. These dollar-linked tokens are used for funds and finance apps, so when charges fall, transfers decide up quick. We noticed an analogous fee-driven bounce in the course of the Ethereum transaction record final yr when prices briefly crashed.
For individuals who maintain ETH long run, rising use offers the community function past buying and selling.
Why A number of the Exercise Is Deceptive
Not each transaction got here from actual customers.
Analysts seen an increase in deal with poisoning assaults, additionally known as mud assaults. Consider them like spam messages filling your inbox.
Attackers ship tiny quantities of ETH, usually lower than one greenback, to very large numbers of wallets. They create pretend addresses that look just like actual ones. If somebody copies the improper deal with later, funds can disappear.
Security researcher Andrey Sergeenkov discovered that new Ethereum addresses jumped to 2.7 million in the course of the busiest week, and about two-thirds acquired mud as their first transaction, which factors to spam boosting the numbers.
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Why This Nonetheless Counts for ETH Holders
The spam inflated the totals, however it didn’t create your entire enhance. Decrease charges made regular transfers cheaper and spam cheaper too, so each grew on the identical time.
Losses from these assaults have already handed $740,000, largely from a small variety of victims. It’s a reminder that low-cost transactions don’t take away the necessity to keep cautious.
If you happen to use Ethereum, keep away from copying addresses from transaction historical past. Save trusted contacts and double-check each switch earlier than sending.
Ethereum’s principal chain is energetic once more. The subsequent problem is telling actual progress other than noise whereas the community strikes towards its subsequent upgrades.
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