- Ethereum hit record TPS with Lighter pushing high throughput far above Base levels.
- Community debates grow on whether layer 2 growth truly benefits Ethereum mainnet or drains its value.
A fresh performance peak has arrived inside the Ethereum ecosystem. New data from Growthepie recorded a moment in the last 24 hours where 24,192 transactions were completed in one second. The figure stands as the highest on record for the network.
The count began rising after transactions from the high-speed layer 2 network named Lighter started being included. Lighter focuses on decentralized perpetual futures and has been handling around 4,000 transactions per second, far above Base Chain, which remains near 100 to 200 transactions per second.
The Ethereum upgrades Pectra and Dencun helped increase transaction capacity on Layer 2 networks. These updates focused on improving performance while keeping the main network’s decentralized structure unchanged.
“Ethereum is scaling,” wrote co-founder Vitalik Buterin on X on Wednesday. The network continued to record elevated transaction speeds in the hours after that comment.
Lighter Network Growth and Concerns
Ryan Sean Adams of the Bankless podcast said that since October, layer-2 networks have boosted Ether’s transaction speed by nearly two hundred times. He linked this rise to lighter network structures and a growing use of zero-knowledge proof systems.
Adams also mentioned that transaction speeds could reach one hundred thousand per second, and potentially 1 million in the near future. He noted,
The big Zk unlock is just starting to hit Ethereum L2s. Watch for 10k then 100k in the months ahead. Eventually zk will scale L2s scale to millions TPS.
The record speed of the lighter didn’t come without problems. The network launched on October 1 and faced several outages within a short time. The situation reminded many of Solana’s early performance days.
An incident on October 28, led to compensation for nearly 3,900 wallets. A total of 774,872 USDC was returned to users affected by the service disruption. This shows that the Lighter team took direct action to address the issue.
Rezso Schmiedt of ₿RRR Capital noted that Ether’s rising transaction volume doesn’t necessarily translate into stronger value capture for ETH. Most transaction fees are being earned by Layer 2 networks rather than the Ethereum mainnet itself. His comment highlights an unresolved issue in the ecosystem.
Ethereum and L2s Must Share Value Flows
The rapid growth of Layer 2 networks is driving a rise in overall activity across the broader Ethereum ecosystem. At the same time, questions remain about whether the expanded transaction capacity could reduce Layer 1’s fee revenue and weaken its dominance in decentralized exchanges.
However, many within the Ethereum community continue to support Layer 2 expansion, while stressing the need to structure incentives so that value returns to Ethereum’s main chain. Possible approaches include fee sharing, MEV capture agreements, and protocol integrations that link layer 2 activity back to the main network.
Meanwhile, Ethereum has been trending upward from a support level around $3,350. That move follows two days of declines affecting digital assets broadly. Technical indicators suggest that selling momentum may be easing, with the Relative Strength Index (RSI) hovering around 32, indicating that bearish pressure has started to fade.
A strong RSI could increase the chances for Ethereum to retest its 200-day exponential moving average near $3,601. Some traders watching key technical levels said that this area may influence the price direction in the short term.
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