Is Ethereum dead?

Ethereum is not dead. As of November 2026, the Ethereum network keeps producing blocks, processing transactions and receiving regular upgrades. The question usually comes up when the price of ether falls, but price and network health are different things. A better test is whether people use the network and whether anyone is still building it.

Is Ethereum still used?

Yes. Etherscan, the main Ethereum block explorer, shows the network's record for daily transactions at about 3.63 million on April 28, 2026. That record was set more than a decade after launch, so activity on the base chain has grown rather than faded.

Ethereum is also where much of the crypto economy's dollars sit. Cointelegraph reported in April 2026 that Ethereum held about 56% to 60% of all stablecoin supply, depending on whether you use RWA.xyz or Token Terminal figures. Counting networks built on top of Ethereum, RWA.xyz put the share above 65%.

Those layer 2 networks matter for judging activity. Much everyday use, such as swaps and payments, now happens on rollups that settle back to Ethereum. Our guide to what a layer 2 is explains how they connect.

Is Ethereum still being developed?

Yes, and on a steady schedule. Ethereum.org's history page lists Dencun in March 2024, then Pectra on May 7, 2025 and Fusaka on December 3, 2025. Each combines changes to the execution layer, which runs transactions, and the consensus layer, which runs proof of stake.

Development is spread across many teams. Several independent groups write the software that nodes run, as our guide to what an Ethereum client is describes. Core developers coordinate in public calls called All Core Devs.

What did the Ethereum upgrades of 2025 and 2026 change?

Pectra let ordinary wallets use smart account features and raised the most a single validator can stake. See what is the Pectra upgrade for details.

Fusaka introduced PeerDAS, which lets nodes store only part of the data that rollups post instead of all of it. Ethereum.org says this allows up to about eight times more of that data, called blob capacity. It also raised the default block gas limit to 60 million and added a way to raise blob limits between major upgrades. Our Fusaka guide goes deeper.

The next upgrade, Glamsterdam, pairs the Amsterdam and Gloas changes. On October 22, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation said its launch on the Hoodi test network had been postponed so developers could study how one proposal, EIP-8037, interacts with existing contracts. No mainnet date has been set, and ether holders do not need to take any action.

Being alive does not make a network risk-free. Apps built on Ethereum can still fail, and other blockchains compete for the same users.