Ethereum Fees Fall 58% as Transactions Jump 54% — but Holders Pay the Price

Ethereum has pulled off a rare trick in 2026: it is doing far more work for far less money. According to Coindoo, reporting on November 7, 2026, the network processed 54 percent more transactions this year, yet users paid 58 percent less in total fees measured in ether, and the supply of ether grew at the same time. The median fee averaged 3.5 cents, down from 35 cents. Put simply, the scaling payoff has reached users, not holders. People who use Ethereum now pay a tenth of what they paid before for each transaction, while people who simply hold ether have watched their share of the network dilute as new coins were issued.

The activity and cost figures come from Ethereum Institutional’s State of the Ledger report, published on November 5, while the fee and supply totals are Coindoo’s own count of Coin Metrics data. Mainnet averaged 2.17 million transactions a day from January to October, 54 percent more than the same months of 2025. That is a large jump in real usage, not a statistical quirk, and it covers a ten-month stretch rather than a single busy week. The combination of more transactions and lower total fees is striking because, in most markets, more demand means higher prices. On Ethereum in 2026, the opposite happened, and the reason lies in a series of technical changes that expanded how much the network can handle.

How Ethereum transaction growth cut fees by 58%

The key to the fee collapse is capacity. Under EIP-1559, each block has a gas target set at half its limit, and the network adjusts fees up or down depending on whether blocks are fuller or emptier than that target. Blocks now carry a 60 million gas limit, double the 30 million of 2024, and they run near their target. Doubling the gas limit roughly doubles the amount of computation each block can carry, so the same demand can be served with less competition for space. When users are not bidding against each other for scarce block space, fees fall, and that is what the numbers show: a median fee of 3.5 cents against 35 cents before, a fall of 90 percent for the typical transaction.

The second driver sits one layer up. Since the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, rollups have posted their data in blobs under EIP-4844, a cheaper form of data space that is separate from the main transaction market. Rollups bundle hundreds of transactions off the main chain and settle them together, so moving their data into blobs took a large share of demand off the main chain itself. The report, citing the Ethereum Foundation’s strawmap, says Fusaka raised the blob target from 6 to 14 per block and the maximum from 9 to 21, and Fusaka activated in December 2025. More blob space means rollups can post more data more cheaply, and the savings flow through to the people using rollup-based apps and exchanges, even if they never hear the word blob.

Ethereum supply growth and the cost paid by holders

The other side of the story is supply. Ethereum’s supply rose from about 121.34 million ether on December 31, 2025 to 122.18 million on October 31, 2026, an increase of roughly 842,000 ether, or 0.7 percent. Readers should note a small rounding point here: subtracting the two reported supply figures gives about 840,000 ether, while the reported increase is about 842,000, a difference of roughly 2,000 ether that is consistent with rounding in the underlying figures. Either way, the direction is clear: ether is no longer shrinking in supply, and the network is issuing more new coins than it burns in fees. Under EIP-1559, part of every transaction fee is burned, which removes ether from circulation. When fees are high, burning can outweigh issuance and supply falls. When fees collapse, as they have this year, burning falls with them, issuance wins, and supply grows.

That growth is the price holders pay for cheap transactions. A holder who owns one ether out of 121.34 million owned a slightly larger share of the network than a holder who owns one ether out of 122.18 million. The difference over ten months is small, about 0.7 percent, but it reverses the story of recent years, when ether was often described as ultra-sound money because supply was flat or falling. The trade-off is real and unavoidable: the same low fees that make Ethereum attractive to users reduce the burn that once made it attractive to holders as a scarce asset. Neither side of that trade-off is free, and the report’s figures make the exchange visible in plain numbers.

Staking softens the picture for holders who take part, but it does not erase it. Staked ether reached 44.2 million on October 31, up from 33.3 million a year earlier, according to Token Terminal data cited via Ethereum Institutional, and the staking share rose from 27.6 percent to 36.1 percent of circulating supply. The current 30-day issuance rate of roughly 1.08 million ether a year, spread across about 43.8 million staked ether on the ultrasound.money count, pays stakers close to 2.5 percent a year. Readers should note the two staked totals differ slightly, 44.2 million against 43.8 million, because they come from different data sources and counts, not because either is necessarily wrong. The yield matters because it is the mechanism by which active holders are compensated for the dilution that passive holders absorb.

Stablecoins, staking and the scale of Ethereum usage

The usage growth is not limited to simple transfers. Stablecoins moved 25.8 trillion dollars across mainnet from January to October, 61 percent more than a year earlier. That figure shows Ethereum’s role as settlement infrastructure for dollar-pegged tokens used in trading, payments and decentralised finance, and it helps explain why transaction counts rose so sharply. Stablecoin transfers are frequent, often small, and sensitive to fees: at 35 cents a transfer, many small payments are uneconomic, while at 3.5 cents they become practical. Cheap fees therefore do more than save existing users money; they make whole categories of use possible that were previously priced out.

Ethereum Institutional, the organisation behind the report, is itself part of the story’s context. It is a nonprofit founded this year with anchor funding from ether treasury companies BitMine and SharpLink, Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin and Mihai Alisie, and its report states that it does not speak for the Ethereum Foundation. That funding background does not invalidate the figures, which are drawn from Coin Metrics, Token Terminal and ultrasound.money counts, but readers should know who produced the report and judge its framing accordingly. The numbers themselves are the strongest part of the story, because they can be checked against the public data sources named.

Glamsterdam, the 1 billion gas target and the risks ahead

The next upgrade, Glamsterdam, is expected in early 2027, with no date confirmed, and it is designed to support a proposed 200 million gas limit, up from 60 million today. The Foundation’s roadmap targets a mainnet running 1 billion gas a second, a figure that shows how far the scaling ambition extends beyond the current doubling. Greater capacity could put further downward pressure on gas prices, which would be good news for users and for the rollups and stablecoin activity that depend on cheap block space. It would also deepen the dynamic seen this year: more capacity, lower fees, less burning, and more issuance relative to the burn.

That creates a genuine strategic question for Ethereum. If fees keep falling toward zero, the burn mechanism that once supported the scarcity story weakens further, and the network must find its value in usage, staking demand and institutional adoption rather than in a shrinking supply. CoinShares and other institutional voices tie their long-term outlook to exactly those factors, but the report’s figures show the tension clearly: users are winning, holders are diluting, and stakers are being paid about 2.5 percent a year to bridge the gap. There is also a practical risk that very low fees make spam and low-value transactions cheaper, which can fill blocks with activity that adds little economic value. For now, the balance looks healthy, with transaction counts and stablecoin volumes rising alongside the fee collapse, but the balance will need watching as Glamsterdam approaches and capacity rises again.

FAQ

Why did Ethereum fees fall 58% while transactions rose 54%?

Capacity grew faster than demand. The gas limit doubled to 60 million, rollups moved data into cheaper blobs after Dencun, and Fusaka raised blob targets further, so more transactions could fit without users bidding up fees.

What happened to the median Ethereum fee?

The median fee averaged 3.5 cents, down from 35 cents. That is a fall of about 90 percent for the typical transaction, which is why small transfers and stablecoin payments have become far more practical.

Why did Ethereum supply grow by about 842,000 ETH?

Fees are partly burned under EIP-1559, so lower fees mean less burning. With issuance continuing and burning reduced, supply rose from about 121.34 million ether to 122.18 million between December 31, 2025 and October 31, 2026.

How much can stakers earn, and how much ETH is staked?

Staked ether reached 44.2 million on October 31, up from 33.3 million a year earlier, or 36.1 percent of circulating supply. The current issuance rate pays stakers close to 2.5 percent a year.

What is Glamsterdam, and when is it expected?

Glamsterdam is the next Ethereum upgrade, expected in early 2027 with no date confirmed. It is designed to support a proposed 200 million gas limit, up from 60 million today, as part of a roadmap targeting 1 billion gas a second.

Source: Coindoo

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