2025 Ethereum: A Leap from Experiment to Global Infrastructure
, In the blink of an eye, 2025 is almost over!
Starting with the Pectra upgrade at the beginning of the year, it has been a continuous upward trajectory. After activation on May 7th, account abstraction and staking optimization directly enhanced user experience, Layer 2 fees dropped by 20%, and data availability doubled. The L2 ecosystem is booming, with TVL skyrocketing from over $20 billion at the beginning of the year to $45-50 billion by year-end, and giants like Arbitrum and Base handling 17 times the transaction volume of the mainnet. Base, relying on user influx from Coinbase, has become a gateway for newcomers, and DeFi liquidity has risen accordingly.
In the second half of the year, the Fusaka upgrade was even more impressive, launching at the end of November, with blob capacity jumping from 6 to 48, throughput increasing 8 times, and gas fees dropping to just a few cents. The entire network's TPS easily exceeded ten thousand, with stablecoin circulation surpassing $180 billion. RWA tokenization has become a hot topic—giants like BlackRock and UBS have moved bonds and funds onto the chain, with a total value exceeding several billion. ETH ETF net inflows for the year exceeded expectations, with total staking reaching 35.7 million ETH, accounting for 28% of the supply, and the number of validators surpassing 1.1 million. The developer community is also vibrant, with Vitalik emphasizing the rollup route at the ETHGlobal conference, making privacy and cross-chain interoperability the focus.
In terms of the market, ETH prices have been volatile, with some deleveraging in Q4, but stabilizing in the $3000-4000 range by year-end poses no significant issues, as there are staking rewards and a deflationary mechanism providing a safety net. Compared to the traffic diverted to Solana, Ethereum's on-chain metrics remain stable: TVL above $70 billion, with a daily trading peak of 1.74 million.
This year, Ethereum has completely shed the “experimental network” label, becoming the global settlement layer for DeFi, RWA, and stablecoins.
In 2026, the Glamsterdam upgrade will bring more blobs and intention mechanisms, with a major upgrade in interoperability. Who says Ethereum is getting old? It's just getting started! Next year is the one to look forward to!!
Next year will be a hot year for the market!!
