The second quarter of 2026 revealed a surprising divergence between market sentiment and the fundamental metrics of blockchain networks.
According to a large-scale study by Bitwise, the blockchain space has become cheaper, on-chain activity has increased, and fee revenue has fallen. The decline in revenue was driven mainly by protocol design, as networks made block space more accessible and capacious.
The divergence between revenue and activity is the key theme of the quarter. While fees were falling, usage was growing, noted Bitwise researchers.
Ethereum: Institutional Inflow and Lower Fees
Let's start with the smart contract flagship. Active staking in the Ethereum network reached an all-time high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of the total supply. The growth of this metric is driven by an inflow of institutional funds.
Thanks to an increased gas limit, the network processed 26 transactions per second, almost double the rate from a year earlier. However, despite this growth in activity, network revenue fell to $64 million, down 51% year-over-year.
Staker yield was 2.84%, with the overwhelming majority coming from consensus rewards, not transaction fees. Data aggregated by the Allium analytics platform clearly shows that the Pectra and Fusaka updates created an oversupply of blob space, crashing fees almost to zero.
Solana: Resilience of Activity and Asset Tokenization
A similar picture is observed in the Solana ecosystem. The network processed approximately 10 billion non-vote transactions, exceeding any quarter of the previous year. Nevertheless, the real economic value fell to $51 million due to reduced network congestion. The share of staked coins remains one of the highest in the market — 68% of the supply (427 million SOL), providing a yield of about 6.25%. The real-world tokenized asset sector deserves particular attention.
The trading volume of tokenized stocks on Solana grew 2,479 times compared to the previous year, reaching $3.32 billion in June 2026, facilitated by the listing of SpaceX and the launch of trading in Micron shares on the Backpack Securities platform, with data confirmed by Blockworks Research reports.
If there is a category that could become the driver of the next growth phase on Solana, then real-world assets, especially trading tokenized stocks, seem like the perfect candidate, emphasized Bitwise analysts.
Hyperliquid and Avalanche: New Development Vectors
Moving to specialized networks, it's worth highlighting the success of Hyperliquid. While traditional networks were losing revenue, Hyperliquid generated $175 million in revenue in the second quarter. An impressive factor was diversification: markets not related to cryptocurrencies (such as commodities and indices) accounted for 32% of the total trading volume of $652 billion.
The Avalanche network, despite a fourfold increase in the number of transactions on the C-Chain (to 236 million), conversely faced a sharp drop in fee revenue to 42 thousand $AVAX. Avalanche's staking yield, according to on-chain monitoring of the P-Chain, stabilized at 6.3%, while the network is actively developing the direction of sovereign Layer 1 networks for corporate needs, such as infrastructure for FIFA World Cup tickets.
$NEAR and Tempo: Transformation of Use Models
The $NEAR ecosystem underwent a significant transformation. Gas usage fell by 81% compared to the first quarter of 2025, mainly due to the outflow of activity from the Kai-Ching application. However, it was replaced by Intents, which became a new growth point with a trading volume of $1.9 to $2.7 billion per month.
Yesterday, the $NEAR Protocol team announced the launch of a feature for paying for AI services via staking. The new option allows users to pay fees for confidential computations and continuous agent operation without linking a bank card. It is enough to lock $NEAR tokens in staking.
The frozen funds are automatically converted into computational credits, the volume of which is recalculated monthly and directly depends on the amount of staked tokens. At the same time, the assets themselves are not spent and can be returned to the user at any time after withdrawal from staking.
The service can be used for all 43 models presented on the $NEAR AI platform, including solutions from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and other leading developers.
Finally, the emergence of the Tempo network, supported by Stripe and Paradigm, demonstrated real corporate adoption. Launched in March 2026, the network processed $386 billion in stablecoin transfers, with the Deel platform using it to pay $30 million to its contractors. This statistic, analyzed by specialists via Dune Analytics dashboards, proves the demand for inexpensive and fast payment solutions.
The Bitwise report confirms that the blockchain industry is transitioning from an era of high fees and speculative hype to a phase of mass adoption and infrastructure efficiency. Now, cheap block space stimulates transaction growth and opens doors for institutional players.
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