This is stated in a new report from Bitwise. Meanwhile, network activity and the volume of staking have reached new records.
Bitwise explained that Ethereum has scaled, increasing the number of slots in blocks and making it cheaper—which is why fees have fallen despite rising activity, rather than due to a loss of interest in the network. In ETH terms, revenue has even increased—for the first time in a year and a half, according to tradingview.com.
Ethereum is a cryptocurrency and a platform for creating decentralized online services based on blockchain technology and powered by smart contracts. It is implemented as a single decentralized virtual machine. The concept was proposed by Vitalik Buterin in late 2013, and the network was launched on July 30, 2015.
Ethereum activity is growing amid falling revenue
In the second quarter of 2025, Ethereum earned approximately $131 million in transaction fees. A year later, that amount had nearly halved—to roughly $64 million.
User activity, on the other hand, increased significantly. Over the quarter, the network processed 203.9 million transactions, compared to 121.1 million a year earlier. Throughput rose from 15 to 26 transactions per second—a rise aided by an increase in the gas limit per block to 60 million units.
“The gap between revenue and activity is the main trend of the quarter. Fees have fallen, while network usage has risen,” the report states.
According to Bitwise analysts, this trend was driven by the protocol’s design: There is now more space in blocks, and it has become cheaper—users are paying less for transactions than before.
The decline in revenue in dollars is linked to the ETH exchange rate
The decline in dollar terms is partly explained by the exchange rate: ETH itself has become cheaper over the past year. However, revenue in ETH increased—from 27,670 ETH in the first quarter to 31,166 ETH in the second.
This is the first quarterly increase in over a year. In dollar terms, however, revenue declined mainly due to the drop in the ETH exchange rate over the same period.
The picture is similar in staking: the volume of locked Ethereum coins reached a record 40.2 million coins—about 33% of the total supply. The influx of institutional investors played a role in this.
