In the Eastern Eight Time Zone this week, the Ethereum mainnet processed over 2.88 million transactions in a single day (according to a Bitfinex report), while the overall Gas levels remained relatively low, prompting a reassessment of its performance and economic implications in the market. On the surface, this is a "high throughput, low cost" technical victory, but it is accompanied by a high dependence on on-chain settlements for USD-pegged tokens like USDT and USDC, as well as the tens of billions of dollars in interest income behind these assets. As Ethereum increasingly takes on the role of global settlement and clearing, questions begin to arise: Does high transaction volume correspond to real business and cross-border settlements, or does it amplify the risks of arbitrage, bots, and capital migration?
Surge in Transaction Volume, Decline in Fees: The "Performance Paradox" of Ethereum Mainnet
● Impact of Data Comparison: The Bitfinex report shows that Ethereum's daily transaction volume recently surpassed 2.88 million, reaching a new high for the phase, but the network did not replicate the congestion scenario of soaring Gas fees seen in 2021 under high load; instead, it maintained a relatively moderate range. This phenomenon of "divergence between volume and price" signifies that Ethereum's optimizations in execution and resource scheduling have been effectively implemented, but it also raises questions: What economic activities are these efficiently processed transactions actually serving?
● Staking Lockup Reshaping Supply Structure: The same Bitfinex data indicates that over 36 million ETH are currently staked, accounting for about 30% of the circulating supply. Such a large proportion of mainnet tokens locked in consensus and yield scenarios compresses the freely circulating ETH spot supply on one hand, while also changing the composition of network activity—more and more on-chain activities revolve around staking derivatives, re-staking protocols, and yield management, rather than early DApp interactions and individual speculative trading.
● Surface Prosperity Experience: From the user's perspective, initiating a transfer, authorization, or settlement operation on the Ethereum mainnet today no longer requires enduring fluctuations in fees that can reach dozens of dollars; developers can also deploy contracts and upgrade protocols in an environment where Gas costs are more predictable. This combination of "high throughput + low fees" presents a superficial picture of prosperity for wallets, payment, and settlement protocols: transaction counts on block explorers are climbing, and contract call frequencies are continuously rising, but these numbers may not necessarily indicate a more diverse and complex application ecosystem, but rather more repetitive calls and batch settlements at the financial infrastructure level.
From Execution to Settlement Layer: Layer 2 Rearranging Ethereum's Role
● Small Transactions Outsourced to Layer 2: With various Rollups and sidechains rapidly expanding over the past one to two years, a large number of small, high-frequency, latency-sensitive interactions have been migrated to the Layer 2 environment, such as daily transfers, game interactions, and some DeFi operations. As a result, the mainnet no longer bears the execution pressure of "every micro-transaction," but instead handles more batch submissions and state updates from Layer 2, freeing up valuable resources for the mainnet and explaining why Gas costs remain controllable even when transaction numbers hit new highs.
● Formation of Settlement Coordination Layer Positioning: The Bitfinex report points out that Ethereum is transforming into a "settlement coordination layer," evolving from a general execution environment into a center for clearing and final state confirmation within a multi-chain system. This role shift makes each transaction on the mainnet resemble "total entries between ledgers" or "cross-system reconciliations," rather than directly corresponding to every click from end users. Consequently, the high throughput reflects the frequent connections and reconciliation activities among various protocols, Rollups, and bridging services.
● Rising Proportion of Financial Settlements: Under this architecture, the components of Ethereum mainnet's high transaction volume increasingly lean towards clearing, cross-chain, and protocol-level operations, such as Layer 2 batch submissions, collateral liquidations, cross-chain bridge lock and release, yield distribution, and rebalancing. In contrast, complex application logic and frequently interactive application experiences are more often outsourced to Layer 2 or other execution environments. In other words, the mainnet appears "very busy," but this busyness is closer to the clearing work of financial infrastructure rather than directly supporting diverse application interactions for end users.
$50 Billion Annual Revenue: The Hidden Power of the USDT Economy
● Scale of Revenue Change: According to Token Terminal statistics, the annualized revenue of USD-pegged token issuers is approximately $5 billion in 2025, with Q4 2025 alone reaching $1.4 billion, primarily from asset interest. This scale is comparable to that of some medium-sized commercial banks or payment companies, indicating that under the business model of "only doing transfers" on-chain, attractive cash flows can be generated solely from reserve asset interest, reshaping the profit structure of global capital flows.
● Interest Rate Environment Binding Business Model: The core revenue source for these token issuances is to store the fiat currency or equivalent assets deposited by users in safer assets like bonds and money market instruments, earning interest while only returning the face value exchange rights to holders, with the interest margin going to the issuer. Therefore, their profitability is highly positively correlated with the global interest rate environment: as rates rise, interest margin income soars; as rates fall, they face income declines and business model pressures. In other words, they are both "cornerstone assets" of on-chain liquidity and financial intermediaries highly sensitive to traditional monetary policy environments.
● Natural Beneficiaries of Efficient Settlement Environments: In the efficient settlement environment of the Ethereum mainnet and Layer 2, these USD-pegged tokens have become the preferred vehicles for on-chain payments, capital parking, and clearing. Whether for cross-chain asset transfers, inter-exchange capital allocations, or collateral switching and clearing path design between protocols, these assets are often prioritized as intermediaries. As a settlement coordination layer, Ethereum provides a secure, transparent, and programmable clearing base for these tokens, which in turn amplifies the settlement scale and economic weight of the Ethereum network.
Regulatory Shadows and Capital Outflow: The Double-Edged Sword of High-Yield Models
● Focus on Interest Margin Models: As reserve asset income becomes the main profit source, this type of token issuance model has come under close scrutiny from regulatory agencies worldwide, focusing on whether it constitutes a deposit-like business, whether stricter capital and liquidity constraints are needed, and how to prevent risks of runs and asset mismatches. Due to the current limited public information, specific terms and timelines cannot be confirmed, but it is certain that the combination of high yields and high liquidity will naturally be seen as potential systemic risk points, thus entering the regulatory priority agenda.
● Cross-Jurisdictional Arbitrage and Regulatory Spillover: Cointelegraph cites industry opinions suggesting that this high-yield model "may prompt capital to flow out of the regulated U.S. market," seeking higher returns through on-chain and offshore channels. This cross-jurisdictional arbitrage amplifies the appeal of regulatory gray areas: capital may bypass strictly scrutinized domestic institutions and flow directly to issuers or service providers with weaker regulatory requirements, forming a regulatory spillover and policy arbitrage chain, making it difficult for a single country's regulatory measures to fully cover global capital flows.
● From Traditional Channels to On-Chain and Offshore: Against the backdrop of reported declines in overall liquidity in CEXs and more cautious traditional regulated channels, on-chain settlements and offshore tools are becoming new migration paths for some capital. On one end, there is the globally accessible settlement network provided by public chains like Ethereum; on the other end, there are USD-pegged tokens and various on-chain derivative tools issued offshore. Capital can quickly complete conversions from local assets to USD-pegged tokens, and then to other risk assets or offshore accounts on-chain, weakening the constraints of traditional banking channels and local capital controls.
Prosperity or Illusion: How to Understand Real Activities Under High Throughput
● The Question of Transaction Count's Value: When Ethereum processes 2.88 million transactions in a single day, an unavoidable question arises: How many of these represent real commercial payments and cross-border settlements, and how many are the result of arbitrage bots, market-making strategies, and internal rotations of protocols leading to "technical busyness"? On-chain data superficially only displays transaction counts and Gas consumption, but it is difficult to directly provide an answer to the "real economic activity proportion," adding uncertainty to the interpretation of network prosperity.
● Multi-Dimensional Characterization of Real Demand: To assess real economic activities on-chain, one can approach from multiple dimensions without demanding precise quantification. For example, observing the proportion of long-term active non-contract addresses in address activity, analyzing the structural differences between small high-frequency and large low-frequency transactions in transaction size distribution, and tracking the changes in L2 and mainnet transaction proportions over time to determine whether application interactions are genuinely migrating to Layer 2 and whether the mainnet primarily assumes a financial settlement role. These ideas may not yield a single conclusion but can help investors and researchers build a more nuanced judgment framework.
● Interest Rates and Regulatory Double Whammy Scenario: If the global interest rate environment significantly declines in the future, the interest margin income of USD-pegged token issuers will shrink substantially; if regulatory measures simultaneously tighten, imposing stricter constraints on reserve assets, information disclosure, and business scope, then the profit model and expansion momentum of these assets will come under pressure. In such a scenario, the current settlement demand for Ethereum based on these tokens may also contract: cross-chain clearing, collateral replacement between protocols, and on-chain capital parking may decrease, and the combination of high throughput and low fees may shift from a "busy settlement period" to a "high-performance idle period."
Window of Opportunity and Potential Upheaval in the New Settlement Order
Ethereum's transformation into a "settlement coordination layer," combined with the high-profit business model of USD-pegged token issuers, has jointly established a new framework for on-chain financial infrastructure: the former provides a globally programmable clearing network, while the latter fills its settlement pipeline with highly liquid USD assets. Under this combination, global capital can bypass some traditional financial intermediaries, rapidly traversing between different assets, markets, and jurisdictions through smart contracts and cross-chain bridges.
However, this efficient and low-cost settlement experience, along with high-yield USD-pegged tokens, may only represent a temporary dividend under specific interest rate and regulatory cycles: on one hand, high interest rates provide the "timing" for the interest margin model; on the other hand, global regulation is still exploring frameworks, leaving "gaps" for cross-jurisdictional arbitrage. When these two major variables change direction, the currently seemingly stable settlement order may undergo a deep repricing or even reconstruction.
In the coming years, whether Ethereum and USD-pegged token issuers can find a sustainable balance between regulation and the market will determine how far this new settlement order can go: will it evolve into a "compliant underlying clearing network" integrated into the mainstream financial system, or will it be forced to contract in scale under regulatory pressure and shrinking interest margins, returning to a more niche crypto-financial circle? For participants, the present is both a window to enjoy the combination of efficient settlements and high yields, and a critical moment to seriously assess long-term institutional and macro risks.
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