The Revenue Divergence: Why Record-Breaking Ethereum Activity Isn’t Boosting ETH Price

Ethereum’s layer-1 community set all-time highs throughout each utilization metric in Q1 2026, with month-to-month lively customers climbing 53.5% quarter-over-quarter to 13.2 million and transaction depend reaching 200.4 million, whilst ETH’s market cap dropped 30% and costs on the bottom layer fell practically 50%.

But in line with Token Terminal’s Q1 2026 Ethereum Report, the divergence between the rising exercise and falling income is the entire level.

Ethereum Usage Hits Record Despite Falling Fees and Valuation

The report, printed on June 17, showed the numbers splitting cleanly alongside two traces. On the utilization facet, every part went up, together with lively month-to-month customers, which rose 85.9% year-over-year; transactions, which elevated 81.5% YoY to only over 200 million; and throughput, which hit 25.78 transactions per second, an 81.7% soar YoY.

However, on the greenback facet, issues weren’t so shiny. Ecosystem whole worth locked averaged $316.2 billion, down 11% from This autumn 2025 however nonetheless up practically 23% year-over-year. Meanwhile, base layer transaction charges got here in at $39.9 million, an nearly 48% fall from the earlier quarter and 81.9% beneath the place they have been a 12 months in the past.

Per Token Terminal, the price compression had a direct trigger, particularly the Fusaka improve cycle’s second Blob Parameters Only fork (BPO #2) in January, which raised Ethereum’s information capability and made blockspace cheaper. As a consequence, the transaction depend went up 38% whereas whole charges dropped by nearly half in the identical interval.

Etherealize, the group that’s working to push Ethereum’s capabilities to conventional finance and a contributor to the report, framed it this manner:

“Ethereum is intentionally scaling the community on the expense of near-term price seize, betting that cheaper blockspace unlocks much more demand (and finally community income) in the long term.”

They are waiting for the Glamsterdam improve, which is focusing on a greater than 3x improve within the fuel restrict in Q3 2026, with Ethereum’s roadmap in the end guiding towards 10,000 TPS and near-instant finality by 2029.

On Ethereum’s structural place in tokenized property, the report famous that it had stayed largely intact by the quarter, with the entire tokenized asset market cap averaging $203.4 billion, simply 0.7% decrease than the quarter earlier than. However, it was up 42.9% year-over-year, with stablecoins main at $178.9 billion, of which Tether’s USDT ($94.1 billion) and Circle’s USDC ($54.5 billion) accounted for the majority.

Tokenized property turned out to be the fastest-growing section, rising 60% QoQ and 325.9% YoY to $4.7 billion, most of which have been represented by tokenized gold, that’s, Tether Gold and PAX Gold. Tokenized funds additionally skilled related progress charges, rising 5% to 19.4 billion throughout the interval beneath dialogue. Regulated institutional merchandise from BlackRock’s BUIDL, WisdomTree, and Superstate have been among the many bigger holdings, alongside yield-bearing on-chain greenback merchandise from Sky and Ethena.

And out of the highest 5 blockchain networks, Ethereum had a share of 71% of the entire TVL, value $316.2 billion, towards the $129 billion on Tron, Solana, BNB Chain, and Plasma collectively. It additionally holds greater than 79% of lively DeFi loans, practically 62% of stablecoins, and 73% of tokenized funds, in addition to 84% of tokenized commodities.

However, DEX buying and selling quantity was the one space the place Ethereum didn’t lead, with BNB Chain processing $162.5 billion towards its $134.5 billion, as Solana got here third after pulling in $104.9 billion.

ETH Price Under Pressure

Interestingly, not one of the exercise described above translated into worth power for Ethereum’s native token. For one, the coin’s totally diluted market cap averaged $290 billion in Q1 2026, which was a 30.3% dip QoQ and nearly 10% throughout one 12 months.

At the time of writing, it was sniffing across the $1,700 degree after briefly hitting a 14-month low close to $1,500 earlier in June earlier than recovering considerably on information of a peace deal between the United States and Iran.

Analyst sentiment concerning it’s divided, with some like Daan Crypto Trades noting that ETH is on monitor for its second-worst first half of the 12 months since 2022 after a 29% plunge in Q1 and one other 21% decline thus far in Q2. That places it on the right track for 3 double-digit quarterly losses in a row.

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