Summary Ethereum's network usage is surging, with record daily active addresses and stablecoin transfer volume nearly doubling year over year. Despite explosive growth in users and transactions, average transaction fees have dropped significantly, impacting fee-based valuation metrics. Valuation multiples like NVT and market cap/TVL suggest Ethereum is attractively priced compared to peers, despite high price-to-fee ratios. Given strong fundamentals, dominant market share, and renewed investor sentiment, I believe digital asset investors should remain long ETH. The story for Ethereum ( ETH-USD ) in 2025 will likely be seen as one of resilience when investors look back on the year. Data 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 staking. In 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 consider. Network 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 usage. Those 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 chain. This was a 21% increase over July 2025 and a 44% increase from August of last year. And 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% Source: Token Terminal, DAAs, Txs, and Fees in millions Transactions rose 52.4% year over year from 34 million in August 2024 to nearly 52 million last month. Despite the growth of users and transactions, the fees have still been lackluster compared to previous highs. The chain did just $39.8 million in fees during August - down both month over month and year over year. The major culprit here seems to be an average transaction fee that has fallen by nearly 59% over the last year. This is even though DEX volume has surged and the all-important stablecoin transfer volume has utterly exploded: Stablecoin Transfer Volume (Artemis) 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% Source: Token Terminal, $ in billions Year-over-year stablecoin transfers on Ethereum nearly doubled. Ethereum's share of stablecoin transfer volume between the two grew from 67.3% last August to 72.7% in August 2025. And month over month, Ethereum saw 29% stablecoin transfer volume growth, while Tron's went down. The network secures the lion's share of stable supply as well: Stablecoin Supply Share (DeFi Llama) 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 impressive. Valuation 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 2020. Though at 986x circulating fees, September is shaping up to take the second spot from August. But there are certainly other multiples to consider. TVL By Chain (DeFi Llama) Viewing ETH's valuation through something like a market cap to TVL ratio, the chain looks far less extended. Even with an enormous $91 billion in total value locked, Ethereum's Mcap to TVL ratio is fairly modest at just 5.7x. This would indicate that, given the value Ethereum secures through DeFi, the coin is perhaps appropriately priced. For 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 40. For instance, Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) trades at an NVT multiple about 5x higher than that. Closing 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 DATs. But it should be mentioned that Ethereum's capital flow story is quite positive at this point in time. From where I sit, it's difficult to justify fading ETH even after the substantial run it has had in the last two months. ETH Seasonality (TrendSpider) ETH is in the last month of what has historically been a mid-year period of weak seasonality. The coin has renewed investor interest in a stablecoin narrative that the chain is indeed delivering on if August is a guide. Based on both NVT and Mcap/TVL ratios, Ethereum is cheaper than peers. Usage is surging, and the chain still commands more than half the total share of both stablecoin and RWA markets. The only thing Ethereum really seems to be missing is fees. How much that matters is up to each individual investor. But given the mix of usage and investor sentiment, I think digital asset investors should stay long ETH.
