A major crypto breach sent shockwaves through the market, but Ethereum’s response was visible on-chain. Daily fees climbed to nearly $58.1 million as traders, arbitrage bots and decentralized exchanges sprang into action. Yet the burst of activity came with an uneasy twist: ETH continued to slide, exposing the gap between network demand and market confidence.
On 30th October 2026 following the major Binance hack, daily fees on Ethereum network shot up to a daily high of around $58.09 million.
This was double what was seen in late winter and shows a big increase in activity on the blockchain. The increase was due to the impact of the historic $6.3 billion Binance hack on 29th October.
Following the hack there was a big increase in transfers, swapping and settling.
There appears to have been a huge amount of activity on the blockchain on 30th October. specialised MEV (maximum extractable value) bots and traders started going wild. Assets were quickly turned into ETH and stablecoins.
The increase was caused by a big increase in MEV bots, decentralised liquidations and DEX swaps as the assets were turned into ETH and stablecoins.
This caused huge amounts of income for bots processing transactions. With Titan Builder making around $24.7 million in fees, while Uniswap generated approximately $10.2 million in a day.
While the base-layer of fees for normal transfers was nothing, the high demand for space in blocks, especially due to traders looking to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities, meant the fees hit a high of millions.
Ether prices had fallen, however, the broader crypto market also saw some pressure, with Bitcoin dipping below $77,000, while Ether slipped under $2,200, according to BlockInsider.
Despite this, there was a clear increase in on-chain activity as traders moved their assets quickly.
There was also significant buying activity. There was one large whale address that amassed around $63 million worth of ETH.
However, there was reduced demand from the U.S., with the Coinbase Premium index (used to measure U.S. demand for Ethereum from CryptoQuant) sitting around -0.21. This means prices in the U.S. are much lower than globally.
The fees spiked as the crypto industry reacted to the large Binance hack. Around $6.3 billion was taken from Binance wallets by attackers on 29th October, according to BlockInsider.
Tether and Circle acted quickly to try to reduce the damage. Tether blacklisted around $1.77 billion in USDT linked to the attackers, while Circle froze around $825 million USDC shortly after.
This means around $2.6 billion of the stolen funds. By contrast, about $2.9 billion of the loot, mostly ETH and BTC, is still moving around.
Ethereum was trading above $2,200 at the time of writing, still feeling the effects of last week’s Binance hack and a sharp rise in outflows from U.S. spot ETH exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in October.
Ethereum closed October down 16.06%, ending a three-month run of gains, according to Coinglass data.
The decline also marked ETH’s third consecutive October loss, extending a seasonal pattern of weakness for the leading altcoin.
BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) Chairman Thomas Lee believes ETH has weathered the impact of the hack relatively well.
"While this is a terrible development, in my view, the relatively muted crypto market reaction is very constructive, particularly compared to the market's response to prior sizable crypto thefts," Lee said in a Monday statement.
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