Ethereum: Activity Growth Surged In August (Rating Upgrade)

Summary Ethereum's network usage is surging, with record daily active addresses and stablecoin transfer volume nearly doubling year over ￰0￱ explosive growth in users and transactions, average transaction fees have dropped significantly, impacting fee-based valuation ￰1￱ multiples like NVT and market cap/TVL suggest Ethereum is attractively priced compared to peers, despite high price-to-fee ￰2￱ strong fundamentals, dominant market share, and renewed investor sentiment, I believe digital asset investors should remain long ￰3￱ story for Ethereum ( ETH-USD ) in 2025 will likely be seen as one of resilience when investors look back on the ￰4￱ by YCharts After presumably bottoming out sentiment in the Spring, the coin's performance following the network's May Pectra upgrade has been outstanding, and ETH is currently up better than 32% on the year before ￰5￱ this update, we'll look at what I view to be key network metrics as well as several valuation multiples Ethereum investors might want to ￰6￱ Activity Growth In a prior article covering Ethereum's fundamental setup, I noted what I felt were several positive signs pertaining to the blockchain's network ￰7￱ positive trends continued through the end of August, and I'm now even comfortable saying usage of the chain is 'surging.' Ethereum DAAs vs Fees (Token Terminal) For the full month of August, Ethereum had 9.2 million daily active addresses - an all-time record for the ￰8￱ was a 21% increase over July 2025 and a 44% increase from August of last ￰9￱ this was not the only metric where Ethereum saw explosive year-over-year growth: Monthly Metrics August 2024 July 2025 August 2025 YoY MoM DAAs 6.4 7.6 9.2 43.8% 21.1% Transactions 34 46.7 51.8 52.4% 10.9% Fees $62.82 $49.68 $39.75 -36.7% -20.0% Avg Tx Fee $1.83 $1.05 $0.76 -58.5% -27.6%) The chart above shows Ethereum's stablecoin transfer volume compared to that of Tron ( TRX-USD ).

Tron perhaps doesn't get the attention that other coins with larger market caps get, but that network has helped onboard an enormous amount of Tether ( USDT-USD ) users and is the only chain that even comes close to Ethereum in stablecoin supply at 28% share of market. Still, the gap between the two in stablecoin usage increased in August: Stablecoin Transfers August 2024 July 2025 August 2025 YoY MoM Tron $458 $711 $678 47.9% -4.7% Ethereum $941 $1,400 $1,800 91.3% 28.6% ETH Share 67.26% 66.32% 72.65% 8.0% 9.5%) While down slightly from 55% at the start of the year, Ethereum's stablecoin coin supply share is still dominant at 52.9%. Furthermore, the growth of stable usage relative to its biggest supply competitor is ￰10￱ I mentioned it in my ETH piece from August as well, but Ethereum's valuation is potentially cause for concern if one believes digital assets should trade on fee-based fundamentals: Ethereum P/F Ratio (Token Terminal) At an average circulating P/F multiple of 957x fees, August was the second most 'overvalued' the coin has ever been for a full month, after only February ￰11￱ at 986x circulating fees, September is shaping up to take the second spot from ￰12￱ there are certainly other multiples to ￰13￱ By Chain (DeFi Llama) Viewing ETH's valuation through something like a market cap to TVL ratio, the chain looks far less ￰14￱ with an enormous $91 billion in total value locked, Ethereum's Mcap to TVL ratio is fairly modest at just ￰15￱ would indicate that, given the value Ethereum secures through DeFi, the coin is perhaps appropriately ￰16￱ good measure, we can look to something like the NVT ratio, which compares a coin's market capitalization to the USD-denominated value transferred over the network: 30-Day Average NVT Ratio (CoinMetrics) By this metric, I would actually argue Ethereum is somewhat cheap, given a 30-day average NVT ratio of just ￰17￱ instance, Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) trades at an NVT multiple about 5x higher than ￰18￱ Summary There were a lot of positive signs for Ethereum in August.

I intentionally didn't mention capital flows in this article because I wanted to focus primarily on the chain's usage rather than speculative interest through ETFs or ￰19￱ it should be mentioned that Ethereum's capital flow story is quite positive at this point in ￰20￱ where I sit, it's difficult to justify fading ETH even after the substantial run it has had in the last two ￰21￱ Seasonality (TrendSpider) ETH is in the last month of what has historically been a mid-year period of weak ￰22￱ coin has renewed investor interest in a stablecoin narrative that the chain is indeed delivering on if August is a ￰23￱ on both NVT and Mcap/TVL ratios, Ethereum is cheaper than ￰24￱ is surging, and the chain still commands more than half the total share of both stablecoin and RWA ￰25￱ only thing Ethereum really seems to be missing is ￰26￱ much that matters is up to each individual ￰27￱ given the mix of usage and investor sentiment, I think digital asset investors should stay long ETH.