Ethereum sees limited price reaction despite record on-chain activity…reviving the ‘real demand’ debate

On-chain activity on the Ethereum (ETH) network has surged to an all-time high, but the price has shown only limited movement, raising questions over whether the recent spike in transactions reflects genuine user demand.

According to CoinDesk on the 20th (local time), the Ethereum network processed about 2.9 million transactions per day last week, marking a new daily record. Average gas fees also stayed near recent lows, and the validator withdrawal exit queue was effectively depleted.

In past cycles, this mix would have been read as expanding demand, tighter block space and supply-side pressure, but Ethereum’s price has remained sluggish, fluctuating around $3,180.

On-chain analyst Andrey Sergeenkov suggested that the recent surge in Ethereum network activity may be an illusion driven not by increased real usage but by large-scale “address poisoning” attacks. Address poisoning involves attackers creating addresses that resemble real wallets and sending small amounts of stablecoins to many wallets, leaving fake addresses in transaction histories. If users copy and paste them when sending funds, the funds can end up in the attacker’s wallet.

His analysis found that about 80% of the recent increase in transactions was linked to stablecoins, and roughly 67% of newly active addresses were accounts that received less than $1 for the first time. Out of a sample of 5.78 million addresses, about 3.86 million fit this kind of “dusting” pattern. While this artificially inflates transaction counts and new address figures, it is seen as activity unrelated to actual user inflows or an expansion in network demand.

A shift in the fee environment is cited as a backdrop to the rise of such attacks. Since December last year, the Fusaka upgrade has significantly reduced transaction costs, making large-scale spam transactions—previously uneconomic on a cost-benefit basis—financially viable, the analysis said.