Ethereum created more new wallet addresses in the first quarter of 2026 than in any previous quarter in the network’s history. According to data from Dune Analytics, 14.7 million new addresses made their first on-chain transaction between January 1 and March 31 – an 81% increase over Q4 2025’s 8.1 million new addresses.
The numbers are even more striking when you include Layer 2 networks. Across Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync, another 22 million first-time addresses appeared during the same period. The combined Ethereum system – mainnet plus L2s – onboarded nearly 37 million new users in three months.
What’s Driving the Surge
Three factors stand out.
Layer 2 costs have collapsed. The average transaction fee on Base dropped to $0.003 in March 2026, down from $0.02 a year earlier. Arbitrum and Optimism are in the same range. For the first time, using Ethereum-based applications costs less than a fraction of a cent per transaction. That removes the single biggest barrier to new user adoption – the gas fee sticker shock that scared off retail users during the 2021-2022 bull market.
Staking has become a gateway drug. Ethereum’s staking system, led by Lido and the newer liquid staking protocols, has made “deposit ETH, earn yield” the simplest possible on-ramp for first-time users. Many of the new addresses are single-purpose staking wallets created through platform integrations – including the new Schwab integration and existing Fidelity and Robinhood staking features.
Real applications are shipping. This is the factor that’s hardest to quantify but most important to understand. Projects like Farcaster (decentralized social media), Worldcoin (identity verification), and Friend.tech (social trading) are bringing non-financial users onto Ethereum for the first time. These users don’t think of themselves as “crypto users” – they’re using applications that happen to run on Ethereum.
The Base Effect
Coinbase’s Base network deserves special mention. It accounted for 11.4 million of the 22 million new L2 addresses – more than half. Base has become the default Layer 2 for consumer-facing applications, benefiting from Coinbase’s distribution, low fees, and developer tooling.
Base’s daily active addresses have exceeded Ethereum mainnet’s since February 2026. That’s a milestone that would have seemed impossible a year ago. The L2 is processing more transactions per day than mainnet, at a fraction of the cost, while still settling to Ethereum for security.
“Base is doing what Ethereum mainnet can’t do alone – scale to millions of users at consumer-grade costs,” said Jesse Pollak, Base’s lead developer. “But every Base transaction ultimately settles on Ethereum. The security model is intact.”
Demographics of New Users
Chainalysis data provides some demographic context. The fastest-growing regions for new Ethereum addresses in Q1 2026 were Southeast Asia (up 134% QoQ), Latin America (up 97%), and Sub-Saharan Africa (up 89%). These are regions where mobile-first crypto adoption has been accelerating, driven by stablecoin usage for remittances and savings.
In developed markets, the growth is more modest but still significant. US-based new addresses grew 42% QoQ, while European addresses grew 38%. The institutional sector – addresses associated with known fund and corporate wallets – grew 67%, suggesting that Q1 saw significant new institutional onboarding.
What This Means for ETH
More users should mean more demand for ETH, both as gas (even on L2s, gas is ultimately denominated in ETH) and as a staked asset securing the network. But, the relationship between user growth and price isn’t direct or immediate.
ETH has underperformed Bitcoin significantly in 2026, with the ETH/BTC ratio touching multi-year lows in March before bouncing. The disconnect between strong usage metrics and weak price performance has frustrated Ethereum bulls, who argue the market is mispricing the network’s fundamental growth.
“User growth is a leading indicator, price is a lagging one,” said Ryan Sean Adams, co-many the Bankless podcast. “Ethereum’s metrics look like a network that’s growing at startup speed. The market will catch up – it always does.”
Counterpoints
Skeptics point to a few caveats in the data. First, not all new addresses represent unique humans. Bots, multi-wallet users, and airdrop farmers inflate address counts. Dune’s methodology attempts to filter for “genuine” first transactions (excluding contract interactions and known bot patterns), but no filter is perfect.
Second, the L2 numbers include a lot of low-value activity. Many of the 22 million new L2 addresses have transacted less than $10 in total value. They’re real users, but they’re not yet economically meaningful users for the network’s revenue model.
Third, retention is unknown. How many of those 14.7 million new mainnet addresses will still be active in six months? Historical data from 2021 suggests that roughly 30% of new addresses in a given quarter remain active after two quarters. If that pattern holds, about 4.4 million of Q1’s new users will stick around.
The Bigger Picture
Even with caveats, the Q1 2026 data tells a clear story: Ethereum’s user base is expanding at an accelerating rate. The combination of cheap L2 transactions, staking on-ramps, and real consumer applications is working. The network is doing what its developers always said it would – become the settlement layer for a new financial system, with Layer 2s handling the scale.
Whether that translates into ETH price appreciation in 2026 remains an open question. But the adoption curve is bending in the right direction, and at a pace that makes earlier growth phases look modest by comparison. For the first time, Ethereum’s user base is growing faster than its critics can explain away.
