On Jan 22, Ethereum’s daily average transactions per second (TPS) jumped to a new record high, according to data from GrowThePie..
Total network throughput rose to nearly 660 TPS versus around 300 a year ago. Layer 2 networks handled roughly 95%–96% of all transactions. In simple terms, most Ethereum activity is now happening on scaling networks built on top of the main blockchain, rather than directly on the core blockchain itself.
Key Reasons Behind Ethereum’s Rapid Scaling
One key factor behind Ethereum’s rapid scaling is the explosion in The number of live Layer-2 networks on Ethereum has exploded in past years.
As of January 2026, nearly 100 Layer-2s were now active, compared with only one in 2020. Each new rollup adds parallel execution capacity, allowing transactions to scale horizontally across the ecosystem instead of competing for limited space on Ethereum’s main chain.
For instance, the single largest contributor to Ethereum’s ongoing TPS surge was Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 network, which processed about 17.95 TPS on a daily average basis.
Base’s growth reflected real, everyday usage. Users rely on it for payments, DeFi transactions, NFT trades, and other applications that need low fees and quick confirmations—things that are harder to achieve on Ethereum’s main network during busy periods.
Another contributor to the record TPS reading was MegaETH, an experimental Ethereum rollup built for testing, not mass adoption.
Unlike consumer-focused Layer 2s, MegaETH is designed to deliberately push extremely high transaction volumes through the network. Its purpose is to see how far Ethereum’s infrastructure can scale when placed under constant stress.
Proto-Danksharding and Fusaka Unlock Higher Rollup Throughput
Beyond the growth of layer-2 networks, Ethereum’s scaling has also been driven by protocol-level improvements.
The introduction of proto-danksharding (EIP-4844)sharply reduced data-availability costs, making it cheaper for rollups to post transaction data to the main chain. As a result, rollups can bundle more transactions into each batch, directly lifting effective throughput.
Fusaka, an Ethereum network upgrade that went live in December 2025, introduced a bundle of protocol changes (from both the execution layer Osakaand the consensus layer Fulu) aimed at expanding data capacity and improving scaling for layer-2 rollups.
The upgrade includes features like Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS) and increased blob capacity to support much higher throughput for rollups and reduce transaction costs.
