PANews reported on February 5 that according to The block, the supply of Ethereum has climbed to its highest level since January 2023, which is comparable to the level before the merge update on September 15, 2022. According to ultrasonic.money data, the supply of Ethereum is currently 120,521,523 ETH, which is about 383 ETH higher than the supply on the day of the merge upgrade. Jaehyun Ha, an analyst at Presto Research, said that the network's Dencun upgrade last year was the cause of the expansion of Ethereum's supply, and Ethereum's status as an "ultrasonic currency" (a deflationary asset that makes it a superior means of storing value than Bitcoin) may be at risk.

"With the launch of the Dencun upgrade, Ethereum added support for blob transactions, designed to handle large data loads (especially L2) more efficiently," said Jaehyun Ha. "These transactions use a separate fee unit called 'blob gas', which is different from the standard gas fee applicable to regular transactions." As a large amount of transaction activity shifted to blob transactions, this change resulted in a decrease in the proportion of fees burned. "Reducing fees means that the balancing effect that previously limited the net supply of ETH is now less pronounced, even if overall network activity remains high or grows."