Ethereum is processing more transactions than ever while charging users a fraction of previous fees after the Glamsterdam hard fork went live in late May 2026.
The upgrade has driven monthly transaction counts to nearly 80 million and pushed daily activity beyond 3.6 million transactions, according to on-chain sources and Token Terminal data.
Glamsterdam bundled several major protocol changes aimed at boosting throughput and lowering costs. EIP-7928 introduced block-level access lists that permit parallel transaction execution, effectively tripling to quadrupling throughput without increasing block size.
EIP-7732 enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation in the protocol, formalising the builder market, while the gas limit rose from about 36 million to 200 million per block.
Gas repricing under EIP-7904 realigned fees with actual computational costs, reducing median transaction fees by roughly 78%.
The fee compression has reopened use cases that had migrated to Layer 2 solutions, with DeFi composability, AI agent settlement and micropayments returning to Ethereum’s base layer as the cost gap narrowed.
For users and developers, the changes have translated into a cheaper, faster L1 that can support a broader set of applications.
Yet the boom in activity has coincided with declining network revenue, prompting fresh debate over ETH’s market value.
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DeFiLlama data shows revenue has slid quarter-over-quarter since peaking at $366.6 million in Q3 2025, dropping to $260 million in Q1 2026.
Lower fees have weakened the EIP-1559 burn mechanism that once contributed to ETH’s deflationary narrative, leading some investors to question whether the token is being mispriced.
ETH vs Bitcoin
Market performance has reflected these tensions. ETH underperformed Bitcoin in May, with the ETH/BTC ratio hitting a year-to-date low, and analysts at JPMorgan warned that ETH would likely struggle to regain ground without improved adoption metrics.
Supporters counter that fee compression is a sign of maturation: cheaper on-chain costs attract more users and institutional activity, shifting Ethereum’s role toward indispensable infrastructure rather than a speculative high-revenue asset.
Key catalysts to watch include potential SEC clarity on staking within ETF structures and continued migration of institutional workloads to Layer 1.
How markets reconcile higher utility with lower fee-derived revenue will shape ETH’s price path in the coming months.