Ethereum’s application layer generated $1.79 billion in fees during Q2 2026, but the L1 captured only $88.4 million, representing 4.9% of that value. ETH remains below $2,000, down roughly 60% from its August 2025 all-time high near $4,950, and has underperformed Bitcoin with a 32% year-to-date decline versus 11%. Layer 2 rollups dominate activity with 1,270 user operations per second compared to just 20.4 on the Ethereum mainnet, while the blob fee burn mechanism generates only about 0.22 ETH over seven days. Analyst Tanaka_L2 argues that ETH’s value accrual model is structurally broken and proposes that Ethereum should serve as a settlement layer for institutional tokenized finance rather than merely as a fee-generating asset.
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