• Since the Pectra upgrade on Ethereum, user activity has remained below the usual level seen throughout the previous year.

• While new and resurrected wallets are less active, Ethereum’s user churn has fallen by 8.5%, meaning people stay in the network longer.

• Glassnode shows that people are holding onto their cryptocurrency more, but there’s no way to tell if this is just because of the upgrade or the state of the whole market.

Glassnode states that despite the Pectra upgrade, there has not been a significant rise in the number of people using Ethereum. In a recent post on May 20, 2025, Glassnode revealed that since the upgrade, some important signs of user activity have fallen instead of rising. 

Source: X @ Gassnode

This month, the number of users making their first transaction on Ethereum dropped by 1.8 percent compared to the monthly average for the year. In addition, there has been an 8.4 percent decline in revived addresses, meaning fewer users have returned to Bitcoin.

Even with these drops, Glassnode noted that user churn has gone down by 8.5 percent. Churn is a measure of the number of active users who are no longer using the network. With churn going down, it’s clear that current users are staying on the platform for a longer period. 

This means that while user retention is slightly up, new users have not increased yet.

These recent findings were illustrated by Glassnode with a visual diagram labeled “ETH: Month-over-Month Activity Retention.” It uses four colored layers on the chart to show how users interact with Ethereum over time. The brightest blue in the chart highlights new users. 

Those in the medium blue area are shown to be regular users, whereas the light blue section represents users who are back on the app after a break, and the pink section means users who have stopped using it.

According to the data, a noticeable drop in all categories lasted from early February to April. At this period, there was a decline in network engagement. Things began to change for good, with a slight increase in activity in mid-May. At the end of the chart, the area in pink shrinks, which agrees with what Glassnode’s report about less people closing their wallets.

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