Ethereum’s gas prices and whale activity have declined as its price dropped below the $2,600 mark.

According to an X post by CryptoQuant, the daily mean gas price on the Ethereum (ETH) network plunged to an all-time low of 2.9 Gwei, worth around $0.026, on Aug. 18. The average ETH gas price recorded a mild hike and is currently sitting at 3 Gwei.

Data shows that only 115 ETH, worth around $300,000, were burned as gas prices hit an ATL. ETH’s price consolidated around the $2,600 mark amid market-wide uncertainty.

One of the main reasons behind the steep decline in the price of Ethereum gas is the Dencun upgrade, which was launched in March of this year. Dencun allowed layer 2 networks to execute their data blobs on the Ethereum mainnet, causing a significant fee drop.

However, the CryptoQuant analyst claims that the declining network fees could potentially cause long-term problems such as “user and liquidity fragmentation.” 

The analyst pointed out that the ETH supply has increased by 197,000 tokens while the price plunged 35% despite the approval of the long-awaited spot ETH exchange-traded funds in the U.S.

Ethereum’s whale activity has also been declining alongside its fees. According to data from Santiment, the number of whale transactions consisting of at least $100,000 worth of ETH has consistently fallen over the past week — dropping from 5,371 on Aug. 12 to 2,138 unique transactions at the time of reporting.

ETH is down by 3% in the past 24 hours and is trading at $2,580 at the time of writing. Its daily trading volume, however, increased by 32%, surpassing the $10 billion mark.