Following the activation of the Pectra update on May 7, 2025, the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem has experienced significant growth in adoption, reflected in four all-time highs for on-chain metrics, according to data from the analytics site Grow the Pie. However, the risk of phishing on the network has increased thanks to the implementation of smart wallets.

In May, Ethereum reached 51 million active accounts, an all-time high, according to the aforementioned source. This growth indicates booming adoption, driven, among other factors, by Pectra and its newly introduced capabilities. 

    Ethereum hits its ATH in active accounts. Source: Grow the Pie.

Additionally, the network, including its base layer and layer 2 (L2) solutions, processed 706 million transactions in May, surpassing the January peak of 701 million.  

Throughput: increasing efficiency

Throughput, or processing capacity, measures the number of transactions Ethereum can handle per second, expressed in gas per second (gas/s). Gas is a unit that quantifies the computational effort required to execute transactions or smart contracts on the network, from a simple transfer of ether to complex interactions with decentralized applications.  

In May 2025, this metric reached a record high of 76.5 million gas per second (Mgas/s), surpassing the 64 Mgas/s recorded in April. This increase demonstrates that Ethereum, following the Pectra upgrade, is producing a higher volume of transactions in less time.  

Knowing throughput is important because it indicates the efficiency and scalability of the network and allows more transactions to be handled simultaneously, reducing bottlenecks and improving the user and developer experience.  

Data on the network: new high

The metric known as “published data” measures the total volume of information sent to the Ethereum availability layer, which is made up of Ethereum calldata and blobs.  

Calldata includes additional transaction data such as smart contract instructions, while blobs, introduced by the Dencun upgrade and enhanced by Pectra, serve to store second-layer network data. 

These blobs allow L2s to publish large volumes of compressed data to the Ethereum base layer at a lower cost, alleviating the storage burden on the main network and ensuring that the data remains accessible for verification. 

In May 2025, the "published data" metric reached an all-time high of 99 gigabytes (GB), surpassing the 83 GB recorded in months like March and January of this year, as well as in December 2024. This information can be seen in the following chart from Grow the Pie: 

  The data Ethereum currently handles is nearly 100 GB in size. Source: Grow the Pie.

This increase reflects intensive use of blobs and calldata, important metrics as they indicate Ethereum's ability to manage an expanding ecosystem where L2s handle data-intensive decentralized applications, from finance to on-chain gaming.  

Ethereum on the rise, but with an important warning

While most of Ethereum's initial signs were positive following the implementation of Pectra, a striking alert emerged from day one linked to automated phishing attacks. Users have begun reporting risks of losing funds with the implementation (Improvement Proposal 7702, EIP-7702) of external accounts (EOA), also known as "smart wallets." These risks were also highlighted by Wintermute, an analytics platform for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which confirmed that delegating actions to smart contracts is being exploited by hackers, although for now they have not been able to drain users' funds.