Stablecoin issuance on Ethereum rose about 43% in 2025, increasing from $127 billion to $181 billion by year’s end, underscoring Ethereum’s expanding role in on-chain payments.

Ethereum processed a record $8 trillion in stablecoin transfers in the fourth quarter, signaling its dominance as the global payments backbone for stablecoins.

Stablecoin transfer volume on Ethereum reached $8 trillion in Q4 2025, a new all-time high and roughly double the $4 trillion figure from the previous quarter, per industry trackers.

The Fusaka upgrade, rolled out in early December, introduced Peer Data Availability Sampling to boost efficiency and cut fees, with mainnet transaction costs around $0.16.

New address creation surged about 110% since the upgrade, with approximately 292,000 new addresses per day, indicating faster wallet onboarding.

Industry commentary frames on-chain stablecoin activity as parallel to global payments, with expectations for SWIFT-style integrations, real-world asset tokenization, and institutional rails to come online.

Daily Ethereum transactions reached 2.23 million in late December, up 48% year over year, while monthly active addresses hit a record 10.4 million.

There was a notable rise in the daily number of unique addresses acting as senders or receivers, surpassing one million in late December.

Active monthly addresses on Ethereum reached a record 10.4 million in December, according to Token Terminal.

Ethereum holds a 57% market share of all stablecoins issued, with Tether leading issuance and more than half of USDT deployed on Ethereum.

Ethereum remains the dominant settlement layer for stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization, accounting for about 65% of on-chain RWA activity and over 70% when including Layer-2 networks.

Ethereum sustains roughly 65% of the market for on-chain RWAs, rising to over 70% when including Layer-2s like Arbitrum and Base; it hosts 57% of all stablecoins issued globally.