Cardano accumulated 3.3 million ADA in transaction fees against 493.7 million ADA in staking rewards over the 73 epochs ending Sept. 1, 2026, according to Bitquery’s full-chain analysis. Fees accounted for roughly 0.668% of rewards, making the total reward pool approximately 149.6 times larger than fee revenue.
These figures frame Cardano’s fee-replacement challenge as a quantifiable economic shortfall. Upcoming upgrades could provide the network with sufficient throughput to handle significantly more activity, yet maintaining staking rewards at current levels will require applications and users to generate far more fee income.
Cardano’s fee-reward gap persists across two measurement windows
Bitquery’s analysis catalogued Cardano transactions from the network’s first block and organized the latest reward comparison into 73 five-day epochs spanning Sept. 1, 2025, through Sept. 1, 2026.
The 3.3 million ADA in fees equates to roughly one ADA for every 150 ADA in staking rewards. Reserve emissions dominated the reward economy during this period.
Cardano’s epoch 655 supply page offers a shorter official snapshot, attributing 108,500 transactions and 33,855 ADA in fees to completed epoch 654. Averaged over five days, that works out to approximately 21,700 transactions per day, or 0.251 transactions per second. Fees represented about 0.339% of the roughly 9.998 million ADA in distributed rewards for that epoch.
The single-epoch snapshot uses a different reward denominator from Bitquery’s 12-month staker total, so the percentages are not directly interchangeable. Nonetheless, both windows place transaction fees well below 1% of their respective reward measures.
| Measure | Observed value | Economic signal |
| Fees, 73 epochs | 3.3 million ADA | Network fee revenue |
| Staking rewards, 73 epochs | 493.7 million ADA | About 149.6 times fees |
| Average daily transactions | 90,294 in 2022; 24,869 in 2026 | A 72.46% decline |
| Bot share of transactions | 11.5% in 2022; 32.8% in 2026 | Automated activity became a larger part of the smaller total |
| Reserve, epoch 655 | 6.127 billion ADA | 13.62% of the 45 billion ADA maximum supply |
| Share of circulating ADA staked | 75.6% at end-2022; 58.3% in 2026 | Participation declined alongside activity |
The long-window transaction count also points to weaker demand. Cardano averaged 90,294 transactions per day in 2022. From January through August 2026, the average fell to 24,869, a decline of 72.46%.
Activity composition shifted at the same time. Bitquery classified wallets sending at least 3,000 transactions in a month as bots unless their behavior resembled an exchange. Under this method, bots’ share of transactions rose from 11.5% in 2022 to 32.8% in 2026, with batchers forming the largest identified bot subgroup.
These figures describe on-chain actions rather than unique individuals. A single bot can submit thousands of transactions, while a decentralized exchange batcher can process orders for many customers. A modern Cardano wallet can use multiple addresses tied to one stake key, and a holder who stakes ADA without moving it remains absent from a count of sending wallets.
The transaction decline still matters for fee revenue because every action creates an opportunity to pay a fee. It cannot reveal how many users left, remained active or delegated their coins.
Bitquery also measured a decline in the share of circulating ADA staked, from 75.6% at the end of 2022 to 58.3% in the final epoch of its study period. This is a participation metric. The cited evidence contains no direct security-outcome measure, so it cannot support a claim that network security has already deteriorated.
The reserve provides runway as its contribution shrinks
Cardano’s epoch 655 data showed 6,126,859,027 ADA left in reserves, equal to 13.62% of the network’s 45 billion ADA maximum supply.
The reserve is designed to diminish. Under Cardano’s monetary policy, transaction fees and 0.3% of the remaining reserve enter a virtual pot each epoch. The treasury receives 20% of that pot, and the balance is available for stake rewards, subject to pool performance. Unclaimed rewards remain in the reserve.
Applying a fixed percentage to the remaining balance produces exponential decay. Cardano’s documentation describes a reserve half-life of roughly four to five years, without setting a definitive exhaustion date.
This declining reserve contribution changes the reward side of the equation. Nominal reward outlays can fall as emissions decrease, which would reduce the fee revenue needed to match them. A lower target would still leave the network reliant on real economic activity if fees are to replace a larger share of rewards.
Cardano’s fee structure introduces another variable. Current minimum fees combine a fixed component with a charge based on transaction size, and protocol governance can adjust those parameters. Higher revenue per transaction would narrow the gap with less traffic, though the price of block space can also influence demand.
Holding average fees constant shifts the calculation toward activity. Scaling the 2026 average of 24,869 daily transactions by the current 149.6 reward-to-fee ratio produces roughly 3.72 million transactions per day, or about 43.1 transactions per second.
That is a simplified gross scenario calculated before the 20% treasury allocation. It translates the measured gap rather than forecasting a precise break-even point.
The 43.1 TPS figure broadly aligns with CryptoSlate’s Sept. 8 model, which estimated that replacing reserve-funded rewards could require roughly 36 to 50 sustained transactions per second, placing a central estimate near 45 TPS after the treasury cut.
Linear Leios is designed for throughput above that range. The proposed CIP-164 specification models sustained capacity above the simplified 43 TPS scenario, giving Cardano a plausible technical path to process the necessary volume.
Leios test results leave the demand question open
Test results address only the capacity side. Cardano reported roughly sixfold Leios performance in an August public testnet update using synthetic traffic. The result demonstrated that the design could handle more load under test conditions but supplied no evidence that mainnet users would generate enough activity to multiply fee revenue by roughly 150 times.
Deployment also remains ahead. Intersect’s Dijkstra planning document targets code completion in the fourth quarter of 2026, excluding Preview and pre-production testing and governance time from that schedule. The mainnet hard-fork date remains undetermined.
The economic equation has several moving parts. More transactions and higher average fees increase the revenue side. Declining reserve emissions and lower reward outlays reduce the amount fees would need to replace. Leios expands Cardano’s processing capacity, but adoption determines how much of that capacity generates revenue.
For now, the measured distance is stark: 3.3 million ADA in fees against 493.7 million ADA in rewards. Leios may remove a technical ceiling, while Cardano’s larger test is whether it can attract enough paid activity to turn capacity into durable network income.
