Ethereum hits record network growth — but ETH price isn’t following

Ethereum simply recorded the biggest single-day surge in new pockets creation in its historical past. Nonetheless, the value of ETH is barely reacting, a divergence that’s elevating questions on whether or not community development is definitely translating into actual funding demand.

Knowledge from Santiment exhibits that 393,600 new Ethereum wallets have been created in a single day, the best every day community development ever recorded. 

On the identical time, the variety of non-empty Ethereum wallets climbed to 172.97 million, one other all-time excessive, confirming that extra customers than ever now maintain a minimum of some ETH.

Supply: Santiment

Ordinarily, that stage of adoption could be anticipated to help a value breakout. As a substitute, ETH stays range-bound.

Ethereum adoption is booming, however value shouldn’t be

Regardless of the historic surge in pockets development, Ethereum’s value has not adopted via.

On TradingView’s 12-hour ETH/USD chart, Ether is buying and selling round $3,177, nonetheless nicely under the $4,000–$4,500 zone the place it was rejected a number of occasions in 2025. 

Supply: TradingView

Whereas ETH has rebounded from its November lows close to $2,800, the construction stays a sequence of decrease highs, indicating that bullish momentum stays restricted.

The Relative Power Index [RSI] sits close to 60, a stage that displays average shopping for stress however not the sort of power sometimes related to a sustained breakout. 

Quantity has additionally remained muted in comparison with the peaks seen throughout earlier rally makes an attempt, suggesting that enormous patrons usually are not aggressively accumulating.

This creates a transparent mismatch: Ethereum is onboarding customers at a quicker tempo than ever, however capital shouldn’t be flowing into ETH on the identical price.

What’s driving the surge in Ethereum wallets?

The Santiment data highlights explosive development in community exercise, however it doesn’t essentially imply these new customers are shopping for or holding massive quantities of ETH.

A lot of Ethereum’s current development has been pushed by:

• Layer-2 networks similar to Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism
• Stablecoin utilization for funds, buying and selling, and remittances
• Airdrop farming and DeFi exercise

In these instances, customers usually work together with Ethereum whereas holding minimal ETH, utilizing it solely to pay for fuel or bridge funds. This will increase pockets counts and transaction quantity, however it doesn’t create sustained shopping for stress for the ETH token itself.

In different phrases, Ethereum the community is rising — Ethereum the asset shouldn’t be.

What it means for Ethereum

From a basic perspective, Ethereum has by no means been in a stronger place. Document pockets development and a rising variety of non-empty addresses sign that its function because the spine of crypto finance continues to broaden.

From a market perspective, nonetheless, ETH stays caught in a distribution zone, with patrons failing to push the value again into a transparent uptrend.

Till capital inflows and sustained accumulation match on-chain development, Ethereum’s adoption growth might stay disconnected from ETH’s value — a warning signal for merchants anticipating community metrics to translate straight right into a rally.

Remaining Ideas

• Document pockets creation exhibits explosive community utilization from Layer-2s, stablecoins, and DeFi exercise.
• Most of this development shouldn’t be translating into long-term ETH accumulation, maintaining the value caught in a spread.