Ethereum Onchain Activity Hits Record High, but ETH Price Signals Caution

Ethereum has recorded its highest level of onchain activity to date, but the surge is raising questions rather than fueling optimism. Despite processing nearly 2.9 million transactions in a single day last week, ETH’s price action remains muted, suggesting that the spike may not reflect genuine user demand.

Historically, rising transaction counts combined with low validator exits and stable fees would signal strong network usage, tighter blockspace, and growing pressure on ETH supply. This time, however, those signals are not translating into price momentum. Ether was trading near $3,180 on Monday, down about 0.7% on the day and underperforming broader crypto benchmarks such as the CoinDesk 20 index.

According to onchain researcher Andrey Sergeenkov, a large portion of the recent activity may be driven by address poisoning attacks rather than organic growth. In these attacks, scammers send tiny “dust” amounts of stablecoins, often under $1, to a massive number of wallets. The goal is to seed transaction histories with lookalike addresses that resemble legitimate ones, increasing the risk that users later copy and send funds to the wrong destination.

Sergeenkov’s data indicates that stablecoins account for roughly 80% of the unusual growth in new Ethereum addresses. Around 67% of newly active addresses received less than $1 as their first stablecoin transfer, a pattern consistent with automated dusting campaigns. In total, nearly 3.9 million of the 5.8 million analyzed addresses appeared to receive poisoning dust as their initial interaction.

The timing is notable. Lower transaction fees since early December, following Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade, have made it cheaper to execute large-scale spam campaigns. While lower fees highlight Ethereum’s technical efficiency and scalability, they also reduce the cost of running automated attacks, inflating onchain metrics without adding real economic value.

As a result, record transaction counts may be a misleading indicator of network demand. With ETH price action failing to confirm the bullish narrative, markets appear skeptical that the current spike in activity reflects stronger fundamentals. Until analysts can clearly distinguish real user engagement from automated noise, Ethereum’s headline onchain records are likely to be viewed with caution rather than enthusiasm.