Ethereum just completed its most active quarter in the network’s history. In Q1 2026, the network processed 200.4 million transactions — the first time it has ever crossed 200 million in a single quarter, and a 43% increase over Q4 2025’s already-elevated 145 million transactions.
Source: https://etherscan.io/chart/tx
Over the past year, as the chart above shows, Ethereum onchain transactions have steadily increased, with some large activity spikes during the April 2026 DeFi hacks.
The underlying drivers of this onchain activity include stablecoin settlement, decentralized application activity, and Layer 2 ecosystem growth — reflecting durable, utility-driven network demand rather than a speculative frenzy, all while gas prices remain relatively low.
As a leading Ethereum staking infrastructure provider, Figment tracks onchain activity closely, because shifts in base layer usage have direct implications for validator economics. This post breaks down the Q1 2026 data, identifies the structural forces behind Ethereum’s sustained momentum, explains what the activity/fee decoupling signals about network maturation, and explores what it all means for institutional stakers today.
Q1 2026: The Data
Ethereum’s Q1 2026 transaction record was not a complete surprise. The quarter capped a sustained upward trend in network activity that began in mid-2025, with each successive quarter outpacing the last.
The headline figure — 200.4 million base-layer transactions — represents the first time Ethereum has crossed that threshold in any quarter. It followed Q4 2025’s 145 million transactions, which itself included the single-day record of 2,230,801 confirmed transactions on December 29, 2025, logged by Blockchair. That daily record was eclipsed in January 2026, when the network processed 2,885,524 transactions in a single day, the highest daily figure in the network’s history at that point.
Beyond raw transaction counts, the breadth of activity tells a more complete story:
- Active addresses climbed past 33 million in Q1 2026, exceeding the peaks registered during the 2021 bull market
- 8.7 million new smart contracts were deployed in Q4 2025, reflecting sustained developer engagement carried into Q1
And the cost environment for all of this activity? On April 7, 2026, average gas prices hit 0.052 Gwei — a figure that would have been unimaginable during prior high-activity cycles. A standard ERC-20 transfer now costs approximately $0.01–$0.02, and complex operations such as Uniswap swaps remain under $0.15.
There are a few factors driving the reduction in these costs. First, the price of ETH has come down about 43% over the last year. Gas prices have also dropped significantly — close to 94% over the last year.
What’s Driving the Activity
Three structural forces underpin Ethereum’s record transaction volumes.
Stablecoin Settlement
Stablecoin transfers now account for an estimated 35–40% of daily onchain activity on Ethereum, with the stablecoin market on the network holding steady around $164 billion throughout Q1 2026. As institutional participants, treasuries, and enterprises increasingly rely on digital assets for payments, settlement, and cross-border transfers, Ethereum has emerged as the preferred settlement layer. The scale and consistency of this flow is not a transient trend, it represents a durable, recurring source of network demand.
DeFi Depth
Decentralized application activity continues to generate substantial and diversified network usage. Total value locked in Ethereum-based DeFi protocols reached $97 billion in 2025, sustaining deep onchain interaction as participants manage positions, execute swaps, interact with lending protocols, and participate in governance. The breadth of that activity — spanning decentralized exchanges, borrowing markets, liquid staking protocols, and more — contributes meaningfully to the diversity and resilience of Ethereum’s transaction base.
To note, while it was just after Q1, April 2026’s record $650M+ in DeFi exploits across 30 incidents highlights why institutional participants increasingly distinguish between native ETH staking infrastructure and more complex DeFi exposure.
Layer 2 Growth and EIP-4844
Layer 2 networks now handle more than 60% of total Ethereum transaction volume, processing activity at fees of under $0.01 per transaction. L2 growth generates settlement activity on Ethereum itself, particularly following the introduction of blob transactions via EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding), which dramatically reduced data posting costs for rollups. The Fusaka upgrade in December 2025 introduced PeerDAS and doubled blob capacity. The result: record-level throughput without the fee pressure that characterized prior demand spikes.
Why This Cycle Is Structurally Different
Previous peaks in Ethereum’s transaction history were almost invariably tied to speculative demand. The ICO boom of 2017, DeFi summer in 2020, and NFT-driven congestion in 2021 each pushed gas fees to levels that made ordinary participation economically unviable, routinely exceeding $50 per swap and temporarily pricing most users off the network entirely.
Today’s record-breaking activity is occurring in a fundamentally different cost environment. Ethereum mainnet fees dropped roughly 95% to approximately $0.01 per transaction by early 2026 — a direct consequence of scalability improvements implemented over the past two years. The decoupling of record transaction volume from elevated fees changes the character of Ethereum’s usage profile in a material way: network demand is less constrained by its own cost structure, and the base of users and institutions able to participate continuously expands.
What Record Activity Means for Ethereum Validators
The connection between onchain activity and staking is direct. Ethereum’s validator rewards derive from two protocol layers: Consensus Layer (CL) rewards — protocol-issued and relatively predictable, accounting for approximately 93% of total validator rewards in Q1 2026 — and Execution Layer (EL) rewards, which come from user priority fees and Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) at the time of block proposals.
As we explored in our recent guide on Execution Layer vs. Consensus Layer Rewards, all else equal, elevated onchain activity directly supports the EL component. In other words,more transactions mean higher priority fees flowing to block proposers.
The catch is that two other variables cut in the other direction. Lower gas prices and increasing stake on Ethereum can result in lower EL rewards per validator. So while Q1 2026’s record transaction volumes are a positive signal for the network, per-validator EL rewards reflect the interplay of all three factors: activity levels, gas prices, and the size of the validator set competing for proposals.
Record Staking Demand Is Tracking That Signal
Institutional interest is reflecting this. Ethereum’s staking participation ratio hit a record 32.04% of total supply in Q1 2026, with approximately 39 million ETH now staked across the network.
The Ethereum validator exit queue saw a brief increase during Q1 and has since returned to baseline. This is the protocol working as intended — Ethereum rate-limits exits by design to protect network stability, so queue movement reflects capital flows, not system strain.
Along with this, On March 12, 2026, the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB) began trading on Nasdaq — BlackRock’s first ETF to offer staking rewards. Figment is proud to have been selected by BlackRock to provide validator infrastructure for ETHB.
Pectra Is Reshaping Staking Economics
The Pectra upgrade introduced EIP-7251 (Maximum Effective Balance, or MaxEB), allowing validators to increase their maximum effective balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. For institutional stakers, EIP-7251 along with some other upgrades in Pectra, has meaningful practical implications:
- Consolidation: operators holding large ETH positions can now consolidate multiple validators into fewer, reducing operational overhead and simplifying reporting
- Compounding: rewards can be reinvested directly into validator balances up to 2,048 ETH, rather than accumulating in separate withdrawal accounts
- Faster onboarding: EIP-6110 reduced validator deposit and activation time from approximately 13 hours to 13 minutes
- Reduced slashing penalty: the initial slashing penalty was reduced from 1/32 of a validator’s effective balance to 1/4096
Looking further ahead, the Glamsterdam upgrade — targeting H2 2026 with key proposals including Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) and Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) — will open up the builder space, potentially diversifying the builder set and remove some of the trust assumptions for participants in the ePBS flow.
Staking Ethereum Through a Period of Structural Network Growth
Protocol staking on Ethereum enables token holders to participate directly in securing the network while receiving protocol staking rewards distributed by the protocol. With Ethereum’s onchain activity sustaining record levels heading into Q2 2026, the performance and reliability of the underlying staking infrastructure has never mattered more for institutional participants.
Figment operates more than 42,000 active Ethereum validators. As mentioned in Figment’s Q1 2026 Ethereum Validator Report, our average Staking Reward Rate (SRR) for the quarter was 2.92%, compared to a network average of 2.91%. Figment’s Q1 participation rate was 99.9%, versus the network average of 99.7%. Across Q1 2026, Figment recorded zero double-sign slashing penalties — while the network saw 33 slashing events during the same period.
Figment is the only staking provider to hold NORS (Network Operations & Reliability Standard) full certification for Ethereum, alongside SOC 2 Type I and ISO 27001 certifications. Our infrastructure applies a safety-over-liveness approach to our ETH staking operations, leveraging middleware alongside a multi-client setup — purpose-built to prioritize network security and validator uptime at institutional scale.
For institutions managing or scaling ETH staking positions, Figment’s Staking API and Rewards API provide comprehensive access to reward statements, validator-level performance data, and analytics across the staking lifecycle — enabling informed decision-making as Ethereum continues to evolve.
Conclusion
Ethereum’s Q1 2026 record — 200.4 million transactions, a 43% increase over the prior quarter, processed at the lowest fees in the network’s history — marks a meaningful inflection point in Ethereum’s maturation as a global settlement layer. The structural drivers underpinning that activity: stablecoin settlement at institutional scale, deep and diversified DeFi usage, and a maturing L2 ecosystem built on EIP-4844’s blob architecture, point to a network operating at a fundamentally higher baseline than prior cycles.
For institutions participating in Ethereum’s growth through protocol staking, network fundamentals and infrastructure quality are both essential inputs. As record activity drives fresh staking demand — now representing 32% of total ETH supply — operational performance becomes increasingly consequential.
Figment provides the institutional-grade infrastructure, compliance coverage, and operational track record to navigate this environment with confidence.
To learn more about staking Ether with Figment, or to discuss our Q1 2026 validator performance in detail, schedule a call with our team.
Sources:
- Figment’s Q1 2026 Ethereum Validator Report
- Execution Layer Rewards vs. Consensus Layer Rewards — Figment
- Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade: What Stakers Need to Know — Figment
- Ethereum just had its busiest quarter ever — CoinDesk
- BlackRock debuts staked ether ETF — CoinDesk
- Ethereum staking statistics 2026 — Datawallet
- Ethereum gas fees statistics 2026 — CoinLaw
- Glamsterdam upgrade — CryptoAPIs
- Pectra MaxEB staking impact — Consensys
