Ethereum hits all-time high of 18.7M weekly transactions while fees crater to $0.008

Ethereum just posted 18.7 million transactions in a single week, the highest figure the network has ever recorded. At the same time, the median cost of a transaction fell to $0.008, an all-time low. For context, that’s less than a penny per transaction on the world’s largest smart contract platform. What’s driving the surge The record-setting week didn’t come out of nowhere. Ethereum’s daily transaction peaks approached 2.9 million back in January 2026, and the network processed over 200 million transactions in Q1 2026 alone. The fee collapse traces back to network upgrades activated in 2025. The Pectra and Fusaka upgrades were specifically designed to improve layer-1 scalability and reduce transaction costs. Stablecoin usage and staking participation have been identified as key drivers of the activity boom. Token Terminal flagged the milestone figures, and Blockworks had previously reported comparable weekly highs of roughly 18.66 million transactions earlier in 2026. Multiple analytics platforms have confirmed the trend of elevated transaction volumes compared to previous years. The price paradox Despite all this record-breaking activity, ETH has been trading below $2,400 as of A...