Ethereum’s main blockchain just handled more daily activity than its faster and cheaper side networks. ETH price barely moved during the spike, which suggests traders saw this as a usage story rather than a trading event. It comes at a time when lower fees are pulling people back to Ethereum’s main chain after years of traffic drifting to smaller networks.
Why Ethereum Is Busier Than Its Side Networks
Ethereum has a main road, called the mainnet, and smaller side roads known as Layer-2 networks. Names like Arbitrum and Base fall into that group. They process transactions cheaply and then send the results back to Ethereum for security.
Earlier this month, activity on the mainnet jumped. Daily active wallets climbed close to one million and briefly touched 1.3 million on January 16, according to Token Terminal. That put Ethereum ahead of its biggest side networks for the first time in a long while.
Return to Mainnet@ethereum L1 outranks all leading L2s in terms of daily active addresses.
Interesting. pic.twitter.com/Nk7O5adWA5
— Token Terminal
(@tokenterminal) January 22, 2026
Active wallets show people actually using the network to send money, trade, or use apps, so this kind of move points to real behavior rather than price watching.
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Lower Fees Are Pulling People Back
The increase followed December’s Fusaka upgrade, which lowered transaction costs and made sending ETH and stablecoins affordable again. It is similar to tolls dropping on a busy road, traffic returns quickly.
Stablecoins drove a big share of the activity. These dollar-linked tokens are used for payments and finance apps, so when fees fall, transfers pick up fast. We saw a similar fee-driven jump during the Ethereum transaction record last year when costs briefly crashed.
For people who hold ETH long term, growing use gives the network purpose beyond trading.
Why Some of the Activity Is Misleading
Not every transaction came from real users.
Analysts noticed a rise in address poisoning attacks, also called dust attacks. Think of them like spam messages filling your inbox.
Attackers send tiny amounts of ETH, often less than one dollar, to huge numbers of wallets. They create fake addresses that look similar to real ones. If someone copies the wrong address later, funds can disappear.
Security researcher Andrey Sergeenkov found that new Ethereum addresses jumped to 2.7 million during the busiest week, and about two-thirds received dust as their first transaction, which points to spam boosting the numbers.
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Why This Still Counts for ETH Holders
The spam inflated the totals, but it did not create the entire increase. Lower fees made normal transfers cheaper and spam cheaper too, so both grew at the same time.
Losses from these attacks have already passed $740,000, mostly from a small number of victims. It is a reminder that cheap transactions do not remove the need to stay careful.
If you use Ethereum, avoid copying addresses from transaction history. Save trusted contacts and double-check every transfer before sending.
Ethereum’s main chain is active again. The next challenge is telling real growth apart from noise while the network moves toward its next upgrades.
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The post Ethereum Mainnet Activity Surges Past Layer 2 Networks appeared first on 99Bitcoins.
