Glassnode data showed that Ethereum’s 30-day on-chain activity retention roughly doubled, with interacting addresses rising from about 4,000,000 to nearly 8,000,000. The same update tied the jump primarily to first-time participants rather than repeat wallets, which matters because cohort quality often determines whether a usage spike becomes durable demand.
On the same date, Ethereum processed a record 2.8 million daily transactions, and the retention lift was concentrated in the “new cohort” of users entering the network over the prior month. Together, those two datapoints point to a material throughput moment: more addresses engaging, and more transactions clearing, in the same window.
Ethereum’s Month-over-Month Activity Retention shows a sharp spike in the “New” cohort, indicating a surge in first-time interacting addresses over the past 30 days.
This reflects a notable influx of new wallets engaging with the Ethereum network, rather than activity being… pic.twitter.com/h8Zw7hXOSX— glassnode (@glassnode) January 15, 2026
What the metrics imply for network demand and market structure
Glassnode’s read aligns with public dashboard signals cited in the same coverage, including Etherscan showing active addresses crossing the 1,000,000 mark versus roughly 410,000 a year earlier. The combination of higher transaction count and a first-time-heavy address mix suggests a pipeline effect where onboarding expands the top of the funnel, even if repeat behavior is still forming.
Staking activity remained a major anchor in the background. Glassnode cited roughly 36,000,000 ETH locked across staking contracts, while market participants noted continued inflows into Ethereum-based ETFs alongside rising on-chain stablecoin volumes—conditions that can tighten operational tolerances for custody, settlement, and liquidity management.
A key attribution in the narrative is cost and execution efficiency. Analysts linked the onboarding wave to lower transaction costs and expanded Layer-2 execution that offloaded high-frequency activity while preserving Ethereum settlement finality, which fits the idea of L2s pushing volume to the edges while L1 remains the coordination and settlement layer.
The same write-up pointed to evolving infrastructure primitives as contributors to better economics and throughput. Wider use of peer data availability sampling and zero-knowledge EVM implementations was described as part of the technology stack helping improve user experience and scaling capacity, even as L2 aggregation increases the importance of dependable L1 settlement.
Risk surface and operational controls as activity scales
Market commentary leaned constructive on the price narrative, with researchers describing positioning as supportive of a potential breakout, and Vitalik Buterin was quoted as saying the network had effectively “solved the blockchain trilemma” through advancing scalability primitives. Whether price follows is uncertain, but the operational reality is clearer: more users and more throughput increase the need for resilient rails.
The activity mix also introduces specific risk concentrations. Rapid growth routed through stablecoin rails and L2-to-L1 bridges increases exposure to smart-contract bugs, bridge liquidity drains, and MEV extraction patterns, especially when a large share of users are new and may be less sensitive to execution quality, slippage, or phishing vectors.
From an operating-model perspective, the metrics imply dual pressure on monitoring and reconciliation. Higher L2 aggregation can raise Layer-1 settlement demand while simultaneously increasing compliance and security monitoring requirements around stablecoin flows, staking custody, and wallet provenance, particularly when newly created wallets dominate the growth.
Looking ahead, staking totals and ETF inflows will act as practical indicators of whether this new cohort is sticky or simply a transient surge. In parallel, the quality of bridge audits and the clarity of custody disclosures will heavily influence whether expanding activity translates into scalable adoption—or elevated systemic counterparty risk.