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- Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade on May 7 showed modest growth, with ETH rising just 5% from its opening price of $1,849.
- Despite Ethereum’s TVL dominance at $52.6B, its low address activity signals weak retail demand, hindering growth.
- Ethereum’s user growth struggles are compounded by Layer 2 fragmentation and asset bridging challenges, limiting its adoption.
Ethereum has certainly carried out its much-anticipated Pectra upgrade on 7th May, but the kind of reaction it has received in the markets has been underwhelming. The opening price of ETH was $1,849 and it closed at $1, 811 which was a 2% decrease. At the end of the day, the ETH traded at a very modest climb of about 5% from the opening price, averaging about $1,936. The poor performance underscores issues related to the growth of Ethereum and its capability to win users.
The lack of reaction could be reavel partly through the macroeconomic factors, including the tensions of trade and tariffs. These global uncertainties have affected the board in terms of the market leading to the lack of remarkable shifts in ETHs price. However, the recent months’ performance of Ethereum reveals an underperformance trend prior to the existing global problems.
Ethereum’s Active Address Decline
From July 2023 to April 2025, the number of Ethereum’s active addresses, important for gauging the network utility and user expansion, hovered around 400,000 to 600,000. The figure is far in contrast to Tron (TRX) and Ton (TON) that have displayed significant user growth. Tron witnessed an increase in active addresses that touched 2.5 million while Ton jumped to 3.6 million. Both of these platforms performed better than Ethereum in terms of users’ activity.
Source: IntoTheBlock
In spite of all of these issues, Ethereum is still leading in Total Value Locked (TVL) which stands at $52.6 billion as of now. This number highlights Ethereum’s ongoing trusting relationships with institutional players as an indicator that the blockchain is expected to maintain its security and stability in the long term. Nevertheless, the low address activity suggests that there is no demand from retail investors who are vital in pushing bull markets and price surges.
Source: DeFiLlama
Pectra Upgrade Changes
The important changes introduced by Pectra include lower blob fees and increased wallet usability. Although these upgrades respond to some user issues, they do not resolve a greater problem Ethereum has – its fractured Layer 2 ecosystem. The main concern with increasing the user base of Ethereum and enhancing its growth capability stems from the fact that bridging assets and data across these networks still continues to be a significant hurdle.
In the future, the price of Ethereum will likely depend on the growth of users, and not trust in TVL alone. Ethereum must overcome bridging challenges and enhance cross-network integration for sustained success. Tinted glass is more difficult to make than the optical quality glass since the process includes steps as a must for a car windscreen, the near-surface regions of a fuse-blow fuse type must also be clear.
