Ethereum will overtake L2 and Arbitrum base among vigorous users

Dynamic users of the Ethereum network have overtaken mainstream Layer 2 as long-term growth strategies begin to pay off.

According to Nansen data, the number of vigorous addresses on Ethereum topped 791,000 on Monday, more than that of the network’s major L2 players, including Base, Arbitrum and Optimism.

Average daily transaction costs also hit fresh lows. On Monday, average transaction fees were just $0.15. Just a year ago, the average transaction fee on Ethereum was as much as $11.

These Ethereum tool metrics are ahead of developers’ ambitious plans to make the network bulletproof.

Ethereum has more daily vigorous addresses than the prominent L2. source: Nansen

Dynamic addresses in Ethereum overtake L2, fees cost pennies

Over the past year, the number of vigorous addresses on the Ethereum network has increased by 71% from 460,000 accounts registered a year ago.

Daily transactions on Ethereum have also reached an all-time high and are cheaper than ever. There were 2.1 million transactions on the Ethereum blockchain on Tuesday, and the average transaction fee was $0.15.

*Daily transactions on Ethereum are hitting record highs. source: Etherscan*

In the not-so-distant past, Ethereum transactions were extremely high-priced. In overdue 2021 to mid-2022, as decentralized finance exploded and the non-fungible token craze reached its peak, some users reported gas fees over $200.

This has raised questions about Ethereum’s usefulness. Then in 2023, L2 networks exploded, allowing the network to scale as major players like Coinbase joined. The cryptocurrency exchange launched its own L2, Base, with its mainnet opening to users in August this year.

There were two major Ethereum updates last year. In May, an update to Pectra increased the capacity of BLOBs, a tool for storing transactional data. More blob space makes bulk packs publish transaction data cheaper and may contribute to lower fees.

Related: What is the Ethereum Prague-Electra (Pectra) update?

BLOB capacity was further increased in the Fusaka update that was activated on December 3, 2025. Fusaka also introduced peer availability sampling, which created a system where validators did not have to download entire blobs, but could exploit miniature samples to verify transactions.

In addition to lower fees and more addresses, developers are increasingly choosing Ethereum as their settlement layer. The number of fresh clever contracts created and published on Ethereum reached an all-time high of 8.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Token Terminal.

This indicator of future network activity comes at a time of increased competition among Layer 1s such as Ethereum, Tron, Solana and BNB Chain. Solana and BNB Chain are the leading networks in the industry in terms of transactions and vigorous addresses, mainly due to their high throughput and popularity in retail and memecoin.

As the race heats up, Ethereum developers are looking for ways to future-proof the network.

Ethereum for 100 years

On Monday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin he said to X that the network needs to reach a point where developers can finally leave.

He said that app development “is not possible on the base layer, which itself depends on ongoing updates from the vendor to remain usable.” Buterin said the blockchain must have “the characteristics we strive for in Ethereum applications. Therefore, Ethereum itself must pass the pass test.”

Related: Ethereum must pass a “pass test” to survive 100 years: Buterin

The network is far from that point, and Buterin suggested a number of key factors to get it “to a place where Ethereum’s value proposition is not strictly dependent on any features that are not already in the protocol.”

These include:

Full quantum immunity.
An architecture that can be expanded thousands of times to sufficient scalability.
State architecture that can last for decades.
General Purpose Account Model.
A proof-of-stake model that can “last and remain decentralized for decades.”
Block model resistant to centralization.

Buterin added that every year Ethereum developers should “check at least one of these boxes, and preferably several.”

Related: Ethereum in 2026: Glamsterdam and Hegota forks, L1 scaling and more

Gigantic changes are coming to Ethereum in 2026. The upcoming Glamsterdam fork will provide excellent parallel processing on the network and will also raise the gas limit to 200 million from the current 60 million. This will also further raise the size of the blob.

Perfect parallel processing will supposedly raise transaction throughput and enable larger block sizes without increasing gas limits.

*The upcoming updates aim to raise Ethereum’s throughput to 10,000 transactions per second. source: Growthepie*

As Ethereum continues to modernize the network, data is showing more activity on its L1. The payoff may soon be a network that developers can walk away from and on which future generations of app developers can build.

Warehouse: One indicator shows that the cryptocurrency is currently in a bear market: Carl “The Moon”

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