current state of ethereum: looking at the $2,400 break and staking data

I spent some time looking at the hard numbers for eth this week. the price is moving but the on chain data shows a bigger story about how the network is actually being used right now.

market and price:

the price finally broke the $2,300 level that was holding it back for weeks. today it sits around $2,400. volume is up and the buy and sell ratio on exchanges is showing more accumulation than selling. even though it feels very slow, the floor is definitely rising.

staking and supply:

this is where the data gets interesting. right now, almost 30% of all eth is locked in staking. that is about 36 million eth that is not on the market. you can see the live staking numbers here

also, even with gas being very cheap lately, the total supply has been mostly stable or shrinking over the long term. we had a 2.4% drop in supply over the last year. you can track the burn and supply in real time here

layer 2 dominance:

most of the activity has moved off the main chain. layer 2 networks now handle about 95% of all ethereum transactions.

• arbitrum is still the biggest with over $16 billion in value.
• base is catching up fast with over $10 billion.
• optimism stays strong at around $8 billion. all these stats are public here. it shows that ethereum is becoming a settlement layer while the l2s do the heavy lifting.

network costs:

the mainnet is the cheapest it has ever been. a standard transfer costs about $0.01 to $0.05 now because of the recent upgrades like dencun and fusaka. we are seeing 1 million to 2 million active addresses every day, but the network is not crowded at all. fees are staying low even with record usage. you can check daily gas here

sources for research:

• price & volume:dexscreener.com
• l2 value locked:l2beat.com
• supply & burn:ultrasound.money
• validator stats:beaconcha.in