Original Author: Prathik Desai
Original Translation: Chopper, Foresight News
As a staunchly bullish ETH investor, I developed an annoying habit this year. Every day, I open the ETH price chart and silently calculate how much my portfolio has lost. After finishing the calculation, I close the market page, hoping it won’t take too long to turn losses into gains.
As the year draws to a close, I think most investors who bought ETH at the beginning of the year are inevitably disappointed. However, over the past 12 months, despite ETH’s lackluster price performance and wealth effect, the Ethereum blockchain has stood out among its competitors.
If “making money” is the benchmark, 2025 is undoubtedly a bad year. But looking beyond token returns, holding ETH in 2025 has become much more convenient, mainly thanks to the rise of market tools such as ETFs and crypto corporate treasuries (DAT). In addition, Ethereum completed two major upgrades this year—Pectra and Fusaka—which have enabled the public chain to support large-scale applications more easily and efficiently.
In this article, I will reveal why the development trajectories of the Ethereum network and the ETH token diverged in 2025, and what this means for their future directions.
Ethereum Finally Goes Mainstream
For most of the past two years, “institutional-grade ETH investment” seemed like an unattainable dream for many. As of June 30, cumulative inflows into ETH ETFs since their launch a year ago had only just exceeded $4 billion. At that time, public companies were just beginning to consider adding ETH to their corporate treasuries.
The turning point quietly emerged in the second half of this year.
Between June 1 and September 30, 2025, cumulative inflows into ETH ETFs grew nearly fivefold, surpassing the $10 billion mark.
This ETF capital frenzy not only brought in capital but also triggered a psychological shift in the market. It significantly lowered the threshold for ordinary investors to buy ETH, expanding ETH’s audience from blockchain developers and traders to a third group—ordinary investors looking to allocate the world’s second-largest crypto asset.
This brings us to another major industry transformation that emerged this year.
Ethereum Welcomes a New Class of Buyers
Over the past five years, influenced by the investment strategy proposed by the CEO of Strategy, bitcoin corporate treasuries seemed to be the only paradigm for putting crypto assets on the balance sheet. Before this model’s flaws were exposed, it was once seen as the simplest path for companies to allocate crypto assets: public companies buy scarce crypto assets, drive up token prices, which in turn boosts the company’s stock price; then, the company can issue more shares at a premium to raise more funds.
Because of this, when ETH corporate treasuries became a hot topic in June this year, many people were confused. The core reason ETH corporate treasuries rose to prominence is that they can achieve functions that bitcoin treasuries cannot. Especially after Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin joined the board of SharpLink Gaming and led its $425 million ETH treasury investment strategy, the market realized the foresight of this layout.
Soon after, many companies followed SharpLink Gaming’s example.
As of now, the top five ETH treasury companies collectively hold 5.56 million ETH, accounting for more than 4.6% of total supply, valued at over $16 billion at current prices.
When investors hold an asset through packaging tools such as ETFs or corporate treasuries, the asset’s attributes gradually shift toward a “balance sheet item.” It becomes part of the company’s governance framework, requiring regular financial disclosures, special board discussions, quarterly performance updates, and oversight by the risk committee.
Moreover, ETH’s staking feature gives ETH treasuries an advantage that bitcoin treasuries can hardly match.
Bitcoin treasuries can only generate revenue for a company when the company sells bitcoin for profit; ETH treasuries are different. Companies only need to hold ETH and stake it to provide security for the Ethereum network, earning more ETH as staking rewards.
If companies can combine staking income with their main business revenue, the ETH treasury business can become sustainable.
It was from this point that the market truly began to recognize Ethereum’s value.
The “Low-Key” Ethereum Finally Wins Attention
Those who have followed Ethereum’s development for a long time know that Ethereum has never been good at proactive marketing. Without external events (such as the launch of asset packaging tools, market cycle shifts, or new narratives), Ethereum often remains low-profile until these external factors emerge and people are reminded of its potential.
This year, the rise of ETH corporate treasuries and the surge in ETF inflows finally brought Ethereum into the market spotlight. I measured this shift in attention in a very intuitive way: by observing whether retail investors—who usually have no interest in blockchain technology roadmaps—have started discussing Ethereum.
From July to September this year, Google Trends data showed a sharp rise in Ethereum search popularity, a trend that closely matched the momentum of ETH corporate treasuries and ETFs. It was these traditional asset allocation channels that ignited retail investors’ curiosity about Ethereum, which in turn translated into market attention.
But attention alone is far from enough. Market attention is always fickle, coming and going quickly. This leads to another important reason why Ethereum supporters see 2025 as a “year of great victory”: a key factor often overlooked by outsiders.
On-Chain Dollars Powering the Internet
If we look beyond short-term price charts and extend the time horizon, the ups and downs of cryptocurrency prices are merely the result of market sentiment swings. But stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization (RWA) are fundamentally different—they have solid fundamentals and serve as bridges connecting the traditional financial system with decentralized finance (DeFi).
In 2025, Ethereum remains the top platform for on-chain dollars, continuously supporting the circulation of stablecoins.
In the field of real-world asset tokenization, Ethereum also holds an absolute dominant position.
As of this writing, tokenized assets issued on the Ethereum network still account for half of the global total value of tokenized assets. This means that more than half of the world’s real-world asset tokens available for holders to buy, sell, and manage are issued on the Ethereum network.
As can be seen, ETFs have lowered the threshold for ordinary investors to buy ETH, while corporate treasuries provide investors with a compliant Wall Street channel to hold ETH, allowing them to gain leveraged ETH exposure.
All these developments are further promoting the integration of Ethereum with traditional capital markets, enabling investors to allocate ETH assets with confidence in a familiar, compliant environment.
Two Major Upgrades
In 2025, Ethereum completed two major technical upgrades. These upgrades greatly alleviated network congestion, improved system stability, and significantly enhanced Ethereum’s utility as a trusted transaction settlement layer.
The Pectra upgrade officially launched in May this year, expanding data sharding (Blob) to improve Ethereum’s scalability, while providing more compressed data storage space for Layer 2 networks, thereby reducing Layer 2 transaction costs. This upgrade also increased Ethereum’s transaction throughput, sped up transaction confirmation, and further optimized the efficiency of applications centered on Rollup scaling solutions.
After the Pectra upgrade, the Fusaka upgrade followed, further enhancing Ethereum’s network scalability and optimizing user experience.
Overall, Ethereum’s core goal in 2025 was to optimize and evolve toward reliable financial infrastructure. Both upgrades prioritized network stability, transaction throughput, and cost predictability. These features are crucial for Rollup scaling solutions, stablecoin issuers, and institutional users who need on-chain value settlement. Although these upgrades did not create a strong short-term correlation between Ethereum network activity and ETH price, they have indeed strengthened Ethereum’s reliability in large-scale application scenarios.
Outlook
If one wants to draw a simple and crude conclusion about Ethereum’s development in 2025—“Ethereum succeeded” or “Ethereum failed”—it’s hard to find a clear answer.
On the contrary, the market in 2025 provided a more thought-provoking, yet somewhat helpless, fact:
In 2025, Ethereum successfully entered the portfolios of fund issuers and the balance sheets of public companies, and, thanks to continued institutional capital inflows, always remained in the market spotlight.
However, ETH holders experienced a disappointing year, as the token’s price trend was severely out of sync with the booming development of the Ethereum network.
Investors who bought ETH at the beginning of the year are still facing at least a 15% unrealized loss. Although ETH briefly hit a historic high of $4,953 in August this year, the good times didn’t last, and its price has now fallen back to its lowest point in nearly five months.
Looking ahead to 2026, Ethereum will continue to lead the industry with its solid technical upgrades and the massive scale of stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization. If the Ethereum network can capitalize on these advantages, it may be able to convert the momentum of ecosystem development into long-term upward price momentum for ETH.
