VanEck Report Shows Ethereum Cooling After Strong Summer Surge

• Ethereum prepares for its December Fusaka upgrade to expand blob capacity and improve Layer-2 validation.
• September saw ETH prices fall 2%, while BTC gained 7%, marking a slowdown after a strong summer performance.
• Blob usage hit new highs since the Dencun upgrade, with Base and World Chain accounting for 60% of L2 data.

Ethereum’s market performance took a breather in September, with ETH sliding 2% after two months of strong gains. Bitcoin, by comparison, rose 7%, highlighting a shift in trader sentiment.

According to VanEck’s latest report, daily Ethereum transactions dropped by 8.7% to 47.2 million, down from August’s record 51.7 million but still the second-highest level ever recorded.

Decentralized exchange volumes also cooled, falling 20.3% to $111.9 billion from the previous month’s record of $140.5 billion. Despite the decline, it remained the third-largest volume month in Ethereum’s history.

Stablecoin transfers followed a similar trend, slipping 4% to $1.74 trillion but maintaining a strong 105% increase year-to-date. These figures show that Ethereum’s network activity remains robust, even amid short-term market corrections.

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Fusaka Upgrade Marks Next Phase in Ethereum’s Scaling

Looking ahead, Ethereum’s upcoming upgrade, Fusaka, in December 2025, will prove significant for improving the network’s scalability. 

With this upgrade, the network is introducing Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS), which is a new mechanism that enables validators to verify blocks without downloading blob data in its entirety.

This decreases bandwidth intensity and storage pressure on nodes and makes Ethereum more efficient for Layer-2 rollup usage.

Fusaka extends the path paved by the March 2025 Dencun upgrade that originally implemented blob storage for low-cost data posting.

Developers just increased the blob cap from three to six per block after network robustness was assured, and, for the first time since Dencun was launched, average blob usage hit that six-blob mark.

Data from Dune Analytics indicates that Base from Coinbase and World Chain from Worldcoin command up to 60% of all Layer-2 submissions of data to Ethereum, and that is rising demand for low-cost scaling.

The Long-Term Impact on Ethereum’s Economics

Fusaka is likely to increase blob capacity even more, reducing Layer-2 transaction fees and stimulating more on-chain usage. Although this transition may decrease direct fee burns on Ethereum’s mainnet, it solidifies ETH’s place as a monetary asset that is key to network security.

Data from Artemis.xyz shows that falling Layer-1 fees result in higher dilution for non-stakers, supported by the increasing significance of staking in ETH’s economy.

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