BITWISE STAKING REPORT Q3 2026

Bitwise argues that Q2 2026 showed rising blockchain usage despite falling fee revenue, because protocol changes made blockspace cheaper and more abundant rather than because demand broadly weakened.

• Across the networks covered, Ethereum revenue fell from $131 million to $64 million year-on-year while transactions rose from 121.1 million to 203.9 million; Solana revenue dropped from $272 million to $51 million as transactions increased from 8.9 billion to 9.8 billion, and Avalanche transactions rose from 58.0 million to 235.6 million as revenue fell from $1.55 million to $0.33 million.
• Institutional adoption became measurable: Ethereum active stake reached 40.2 million ETH, or 33% of supply; Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYPE; tokenized equities on Solana rose from $1.34 million in June 2025 to $3.32 billion a year later; and Deel paid about $30 million to 7,200 contractors on Tempo.
• Ethereum processed 26 transactions per second in Q2 2026 versus 15 a year earlier after the gas limit rose from 30 million to 60 million, while blocks remained targeted at roughly 50% fullness under EIP-1559.
• Ethereum's 2.84% Q2 staking yield was overwhelmingly issuance-driven: consensus rewards contributed 2.65 percentage points and execution rewards 0.19 points, or about 93% and 7% respectively.
• Active Ethereum stake rose from 34.2 million ETH at the end of Q1 2025 to 40.2 million at the end of Q2 2026, including quarterly inflows of 2.81 million ETH in Q1 2026 and 1.73 million in Q2; Bitmine Immersion held 5.62 million ETH, of which 4.72 million was staked, on 14 June 2026.
• Bitwise's Q2 gas ranking found that Tether's USDT used 6.27% of Ethereum mainnet gas, Circle's USDC 2.82%, and the ten largest contracts just under a quarter; the second-largest user, at 3.39%, was an address-poisoning contract.

Takeaway: Lower fees should not automatically be read as weaker network demand, but Ethereum's staking economics remain dependent mainly on issuance while upcoming upgrades and institutional flows are the principal variables for investors to monitor.