Ethereum activity expanded while network fee burn collapsed
Between January 2025 and July 2026, Ethereum L1 monthly transactions rose 111% while monthly USD fee burn contracted 97%. The relationship between activity and burn did not weaken gradually — and one month in the series breaks it further than capacity expansion accounts for.
Key findings
- Throughput roughly doubled.* Monthly L1 transactions grew from 36.82M in Jan 2025 to 77.84M in Jul 2026, a 111.41% increase, while active addresses rose 42.97%.
- Fee burn collapsed.* Monthly burned value fell from $88.20M to $2.90M over the same window — a 96.71% decline.
- Unit capture compressed further than the aggregate.* Burn per transaction fell 88.67% year-over-year in H1, from $1.71 to $0.19, because volume rose while burn fell.
- One month does not fit.* The burned share of fees held between 68.8% and 74.7% for eighteen months, then registered 26.6% in July 2026. That break is flagged below rather than absorbed into the trend.
01 · Execution throughputVolume decouples from network burn
Indexed to January 2025, the divergence is unambiguous. Transactions closed the window at 211 against a base of 100; chain revenue closed at 3.3. Active addresses rose alongside transactions, so the growth is not a small set of addresses transacting more — participation widened with it.
02 · Unit economicsRevenue captured per transaction
Dividing burn by transaction count isolates what a single unit of activity contributed. Gross fees per transaction is retained as subordinate context — the gap between the two lines is the share of each fee not burned.
03 · Structural comparisonH1 2025 against H1 2026
Half-year aggregates are the more reliable frame than endpoint-to-endpoint change: they average monthly volatility and, in this case, exclude the July anomaly entirely.
04 · The anomalyOne month does not fit the series
The burned share of total fees is normally stable. EIP-1559 burns the base fee, so the ratio moves only with the mix of base fee against priority tips and blob costs. Across the first eighteen months it stayed inside a 5.9-point band.
July 2026 registered 26.6% — 27 standard deviations below the preceding eighteen-month mean of 72.8%. The month is internally inconsistent with the rest of the series: transactions rose while fees and burn moved by very different magnitudes, which a stable burn share does not permit.
05 · The full datasetEvery month, published
Nineteen complete monthly periods, as used in every figure above. Burn share is derived; all other columns are as sourced.
| Month | Transactions | Active addr | Fees | Burn | Fee/tx | Burn/tx | Burn share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 25 | 36.82M | 6.12M | $118.4M | $88.2M | $3.2156 | $2.3954 | 74.5% |
| Feb 25 | 34.51M | 5.89M | $102.3M | $75.8M | $2.9644 | $2.1965 | 74.1% |
| Mar 25 | 38.24M | 6.45M | $110.5M | $82.1M | $2.8896 | $2.1470 | 74.3% |
| Apr 25 | 37.10M | 6.31M | $86.2M | $63.9M | $2.3235 | $1.7224 | 74.1% |
| May 25 | 45.62M | 6.98M | $75.8M | $55.8M | $1.6616 | $1.2231 | 73.6% |
| Jun 25 | 49.41M | 7.30M | $65.4M | $48.2M | $1.3236 | $0.9755 | 73.7% |
| Jul 25 | 52.14M | 7.55M | $58.9M | $43.1M | $1.1297 | $0.8266 | 73.2% |
| Aug 25 | 55.80M | 7.82M | $54.2M | $39.5M | $0.9713 | $0.7079 | 72.9% |
| Sep 25 | 51.23M | 7.41M | $49.8M | $35.9M | $0.9721 | $0.7008 | 72.1% |
| Oct 25 | 48.72M | 7.15M | $44.1M | $31.2M | $0.9052 | $0.6404 | 70.7% |
| Nov 25 | 46.35M | 6.94M | $39.6M | $27.5M | $0.8544 | $0.5933 | 69.4% |
| Dec 25 | 50.02M | 7.48M | $42.3M | $29.1M | $0.8457 | $0.5818 | 68.8% |
| Jan 26 | 70.01M | 8.82M | $32.8M | $24.5M | $0.4685 | $0.3500 | 74.7% |
| Feb 26 | 63.78M | 8.24M | $22.5M | $16.7M | $0.3528 | $0.2618 | 74.2% |
| Mar 26 | 66.61M | 8.56M | $15.4M | $11.3M | $0.2312 | $0.1696 | 73.4% |
| Apr 26 | 68.42M | 8.41M | $11.6M | $8.4M | $0.1695 | $0.1228 | 72.4% |
| May 26 | 72.15M | 8.69M | $12.5M | $9.1M | $0.1733 | $0.1261 | 72.8% |
| Jun 26 | 74.53M | 8.39M | $14.8M | $10.6M | $0.1986 | $0.1422 | 71.6% |
| Jul 26 | 77.84M | 8.75M | $10.9M | $2.9M | $0.1400 | $0.0373 | 26.6% |
06 · What to monitor nextFour signals
- Whether the July burn share reverts. One month is an anomaly; two consecutive months is a regime change requiring a different explanation.
- Base fee separated from priority tips and blob fees. The burned share can only be decomposed with component series, and that decomposition resolves the July question directly.
- Transactions against active addresses. Transactions grew 111% while addresses grew 43%, so activity per address rose. Whether that reflects broader use or heavier automated activity is not visible at monthly resolution.
- Whether fees per transaction have found a floor. The series has sat near $0.14–$0.20 since March 2026. Floor or waypoint determines the long-run settlement economics.
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