Ethereum Shatters Records: New Addresses Surge to Unprecedented Levels—Here’s Why

Ethereum's network is exploding with fresh users. Forget gradual adoption—we're witnessing a flood.

The Onboarding Avalanche

What's fueling this historic rush? It's not just one thing. Layer-2 scaling solutions are finally delivering on their promise, slashing gas fees and transaction times to levels your average user can stomach. Then there's the institutional creep—trad-fi giants dipping toes into tokenized assets and DeFi pools, bringing their client books along for the ride. Mainstream brands are launching NFTs and loyalty programs on-chain, creating gateways for millions who don't know a private key from a house key.

Network Effects in Overdrive

The surge creates its own momentum. More developers build because there are more users. More users show up because there are more applications. It's a classic flywheel, supercharged by a speculator's dream of future valuation—after all, what's a little wallet creation between future millionaires?

A Bullish Signal or Just Noise?

While new addresses are a vital sign of health, they're not a guaranteed prognosis. Some are surely just empty shells for airdrop farming—the crypto equivalent of signing up for a store card just for the one-time discount. But the scale of this wave suggests something more fundamental is shifting. The infrastructure is holding, the apps are working, and the world is starting to click 'connect wallet'. Even the most cynical finance bro, usually preoccupied with his fourth revenue stream, is noticing the numbers.

Ethereum isn't just growing; it's accelerating. The network's gravitational pull is strengthening, drawing in capital, talent, and attention. Whether this marks the start of a new adoption S-curve or a pre-bull market frenzy, one thing's clear: the landscape is moving. And everyone's scrambling for a map.

Ethereum Network Growth Has Shot Up Recently

In a new post on X, on-chain analytics firm Santiment has discussed about the recent increase in the Ethereum Network Growth. This metric measures the total number of addresses that are coming online on the network for the first time.

A wallet is said to come “online” when it participates in some kind of transaction activity on the blockchain. Thus, the addresses that the Network Growth tracks are the ones that are participating in their first transfer.

When the value of the metric is high, it means that the users are creating a high amount of new addresses on the network. Such a trend can be a sign that adoption of the asset is occurring.

On the other hand, the indicator having a low value can imply that the cryptocurrency isn’t attracting new users as not much wallet generation is taking place on the network.

Now, here is the chart shared by Santiment that shows the trend in the Ethereum Network Growth over the past year:

As displayed in the above graph, the Ethereum Network Growth has witnessed a spike recently. Over the past week, address generation has averaged around 327,100 per day, with a particularly large level being observed on Sunday, when 393,600 new addresses popped up.

The Sunday high was a new record for the indicator, meaning that ETH saw an unprecedented amount of single-day address creation. As a result of the surge in the Network Growth, the Total Amount of Holders, an indicator tracking the number of non-empty addresses that exist on the blockchain, has also shot up to a new ATH of 172.97 million.

What’s driving all this adoption? According to the analytics firm, there can be several factors contributing to the trend. First is the Fusaka upgrade that occurred in December, and improved data handling and cut layer-2 fees.

The second is the record stablecoin activity that the Ethereum blockchain saw in late 2025, with the transaction volume reaching $8 trillion in the fourth quarter. “This kind of real financial activity tends to bring in new participants who create wallets to send, receive, or hold stablecoins and other tokens,” explained Santiment.

Lastly, the turn of the year saw growing interest and improvement in sentiment among traders, which WOULD have led to fresh retail traders signing up new wallets.

ETH Price

The past day has been bullish for Ethereum as its price has jumped by more than 5%, recovering back to the $3,340 level.