The Ethereum network is approaching a historic milestone: 200 million wallets with ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of that ecosystem. Currently there are about 195 million non-empty wallets with ETH.
The next graphicprovided by the analysis firm Santiment, shows how that metric has evolved over time. Right there you can see the price of ETH which, at the time of this publication, is close to $1.6000
Furthermore, Santiment highlights that Ethereum has currently around 230% more addresses with balance than Bitcoinwhich registers close to 59 million.
The graph above shows two clearly differentiated trends. While the yellow line corresponding to Ethereum maintains sustained growth from 2021 to the presentBitcoin’s red line is advancing at a much more moderate pace.
Santiment attributes much of this growth to Ethereum’s leadership in sectors such as decentralized finance (DeFi), staking, and on-chain activity.
“The Ethereum network continues to grow exponentially compared to other large-cap networks, despite facing some of the most negative market sentiment,” the firm noted.
Likewise, Santiment analysts add that “while social networks continue to focus on the poor performance of the ETH price, user adoption has continued to move in the opposite direction.”
Still, metrics based on social media comments should be taken with a grain of salt. In an environment where bots, automated accounts, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools can amplify certain narratives, Social sentiment does not always reflect the opinion of real traders or usersas explained by CriptoNoticias.
The growth of wallets does not guarantee a price recovery
Although the number of wallets with a balance is often used as an indicator of adoption, the metric has limitations. A wallet is not necessarily equivalent to a single user, since the same person, company or protocol can control multiple addresses.
Another issue to highlight is that the figure contrasts with the performance that ether is having in 2026. At the time of publication of this article, ETH is trading around $1,660, 66.4% below its all-time high (ATH) of $4,946, reached on August 24, 2025.
For this reason, the expansion of wallets must be analyzed together with other variables, such as economic activity within the network, the volume of transactions, the use of decentralized applications and institutional demand.
On that last point, US spot ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) show a less favorable sign. Since May 7, these instruments have recorded outflows of more than $1.1 billion.
Even so, Santiment considers that the sustained increase in addresses with balance reflects a favorable underlying trend for Ethereum.
Meanwhile, market sentiment around ETH continues to deteriorate. However, according to Santiment, the evolution of wallets suggests that “long-term adoption continues to accelerate beneath the surface,” even in an adverse context due to the adverse geopolitical environment (war in the Middle East) for assets considered risk.