Ethereum smashes L1 transaction record count with December 30’s 2.2M

Ethereum has just smashed its L1 transaction record by processing 2.2 million transactions in one day, all while doing so with lower gas fees than it used to. 

Data from Etherscan has revealed the Ethereum mainnet logged about 2.2 million transactions on December 30 at gas fee levels users could only dream about even six months ago. The new transaction record surpasses the mainnet’s all-time number set in 2021. 

This is happening as quarterly deployments on the network have surged with a record 8.7 million smart contracts deployed in the last quarter of the year. 

Ethereum L1 has a new transaction record  

The latest achievement of the network regarding transaction count has mostly been linked to the fundamental upgrades done to its architecture, with the most recent being the Fusaka upgrade. The Fusaka upgrade happened quietly, but it increased gas limits to 33% and enabled higher throughput that did not require higher fees or allow congestion.

There was also the Pectra upgrade, which happened earlier in the year, enhancing validator performance and staking flexibility while laying the groundwork for future scalability issues. 

Other factors that may have contributed to the surge in transaction volume include increased DeFi activity, a resurgent interest in NFT marketplaces, and L2 transactions. 

High gas fees are no longer an Ethereum bottleneck 

In the past, building on Ethereum was a game of funds because almost everything you could do on the chain triggered microtransactions, which were not always micro in sum. 

It is why meme culture on the network never took off as it has on Solana, where the gas fees are almost negligible. However, that might change in the future because even as transaction volume has gone up, gas fees have gone down. 

An average transaction now costs around 17 cents, which is a far cry from the $2.15 average transaction cost six months earlier. The fee reduction has also persisted despite the increase in transactions, which dismisses the old saying that gas increases with network usage and congestion. 

As for what made this possible, that would be the protocol-level optimizations that have taken place via recent upgrades. Some of those upgrades were deliberately tailored towards enhancing gas efficiency and block space utilization, like the EIP-7702 implementation, the Blob storage efficiency, validator optimization, and state management. 

All those upgrades improved various things, and those technical improvements have translated directly into user benefits. So from now on, average transactions will cost no more than 12 cents, while complex DeFi interactions will range from $1 to $3, unlike before when they would cost $25-$50. 

Ethereum’s plans for 2026

Since the Fusaka update on the Ethereum (ETH) network was a success, developers have shifted their focus to the next major items on the roadmap. That includes more upgrades like Glamsterdam, scheduled for release in 2026, and Hegota, postponed to a later date, which are expected to play a decisive role in Ethereum’s goals of scalability, transaction costs, and censorship resistance.

The Glamsterdam update has two main features: block-level access lists and enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS).

Block-level access lists are considered critical, especially for complex applications like DeFi, while the ePBS mechanism aims to increase the network’s transaction capacity while lowering costs. 

Initially, a more robust anti-censorship feature was planned for Glamsterdam. However, it has been postponed to the Hegota update. Note that there is currently no clear timeline for Hegota yet, and it’s not certain which Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) will be included in this release. 

So far, only the FOCIL (Fork-Choice Inclusion Lists) feature is in the “under consideration” status. The feature aims to guarantee that every valid transaction is included in a block, but the proposal has sparked intense debate within the Ethereum developer community that has persisted throughout 2025.

Discussions regarding which features will be added in the Hegota update will begin from January 8 and is expected to have been finalized by the end of February.

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