Original Author: Prathik Desai
Original Compilation: Chopper, Foresight News
As a staunchly bullish ETH investor, I developed a frustrating habit this year. Every day, I would open the ETH price chart and silently calculate how much my portfolio had lost. After doing the math, I would close the chart and hope it wouldn't be too long before I could break even.
As the year ends, I imagine most investors who bought ETH at the start of the year can't help but feel disappointed. However, over the past 12 months, despite ETH's disappointing price performance and wealth creation effect, the Ethereum blockchain itself has stood out among its competitors.
If measured by the standard of "making money," 2025 was undoubtedly a bad year. But looking beyond token returns, holding ETH became more convenient in 2025, thanks mainly to the rise of market instruments like ETFs and corporate treasuries (DAT). Furthermore, the two major upgrades completed by Ethereum this year, Pectra and Fusaka, have allowed this 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 implies for their future directions.
Ethereum Finally Arrives
For much of the past two years, "institutional-grade ETH investment" seemed like a distant dream to many. As of June 30th, ETH ETFs had seen cumulative inflows of just over $4 billion since their launch a year prior. At that time, public companies were only just starting to consider the idea of adding ETH to their corporate treasuries.
A turning point quietly emerged in the second half of the year.
Between June 1st and September 30th, 2025, the cumulative inflow into ETH ETFs grew nearly fivefold, breaking the $10 billion mark.
This ETF frenzy not only brought an influx of capital but also triggered a psychological shift in the market. It significantly lowered the barrier for the average investor to buy ETH, expanding ETH's audience from blockchain developers and traders to a third group—ordinary investors hoping to allocate to this world's second-largest cryptocurrency asset.
This leads to another major industry change that emerged this year.
Ethereum Attracts a New Class of Buyers
Over the past five years, influenced by the investment strategy proposed by the CEO of Strategy (MicroStrategy?), the Bitcoin corporate treasury seemed to be the only paradigm for corporate cryptocurrency asset adoption. Before the flaws in this model were exposed, this strategy was once seen as the simplest path for companies to allocate to crypto: a public company buys a scarce cryptocurrency asset, driving the price up, which in turn boosts the company's stock price; subsequently, the company can use this premium to issue more shares and raise more capital.
This is why many were puzzled when ETH corporate treasuries became an industry hotspot in June of this year. The reason ETH treasuries were able to rise to prominence lies in their ability to achieve functions that Bitcoin treasuries cannot. This became particularly evident after Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin announced joining the board of SharpLink Gaming and leading its $425 million ETH treasury investment plan, making the market realize the foresight of this move.
Soon after, numerous companies followed SharpLink Gaming's example.
To date, the top five companies by ETH treasury holdings collectively hold 5.56 million ETH, accounting for over 4.6% of the total supply, worth over $16 billion at current prices.
When investors hold an asset through wrapper instruments like ETFs and corporate treasuries, the asset's attributes gradually shift towards those of a "balance sheet item." It becomes incorporated into corporate governance frameworks, requiring regular financial reporting, dedicated board discussions, quarterly performance updates, and oversight from risk committees.
And ETH's staking特性 (property/feature) gives ETH treasuries an advantage that Bitcoin treasuries can hardly match.
A Bitcoin treasury can only generate profits for a company when it sells Bitcoin for a gain; ETH treasuries are different. Companies simply need to hold ETH and stake it, providing security for the Ethereum network, to earn more ETH as staking rewards.
If a company can combine staking rewards with its core business revenue, it can make the ETH treasury business sustainable.
It was from this point that the market truly began to正视 (seriously consider/acknowledge) Ethereum's value.
The "Low-Key" Ethereum Finally Gains Attention
Those who have long followed Ethereum's development know that Ethereum has never been good at active marketing. In the absence of external events (like the launch of wrapper instruments, market cycle shifts, or new narratives), Ethereum often seems quiet, until these external factors emerge, reminding people of its potential.
This year, the rise of ETH corporate treasuries and the surge in ETF inflows finally earned Ethereum significant market attention. I measured this change in attention in a very直观 (intuitive/straightforward) way: observing whether retail investors, who typically have no interest in blockchain technical roadmaps, started discussing Ethereum.
From July to September this year, Google Trends data showed a significant spike in search interest for Ethereum, a trend highly consistent with the momentum of ETH corporate treasuries and ETFs. It was these traditional asset allocation channels that ignited retail investors' curiosity about Ethereum, and curiosity further translated into market attention.
But热度 (heat/hype) alone is far from enough. Market attention is notoriously fickle, coming and going quickly. This leads to another key reason Ethereum supporters view 2025 as a "year of great victory": an often-overlooked critical factor.
The On-Chain Dollar for the Internet
If you look beyond short-term price charts and over a longer time horizon, the rises and falls of cryptocurrency prices are merely products of market sentiment fluctuations. But stablecoins and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) are completely different (截然不同); they have solid fundamental support and serve as bridges connecting the traditional financial system with decentralized finance (DeFi).
In 2025, Ethereum firmly maintained its position as the preferred platform for on-chain dollars, continuously supporting the circulation of stablecoins.
In the realm of real-world asset tokenization, Ethereum同样 (also/similarly) holds an absolute dominant position.
As of the time of writing, tokenized assets issued on the Ethereum network still account for half of the total value of global tokenized assets. This means that over half of the world's tokenized real-world assets, which holders can buy, sell, and manage, are issued on the Ethereum network.
Thus, ETFs lowered the barrier for ordinary investors to buy ETH, while corporate treasuries provided investors with a path to gain leveraged exposure to ETH through Wall Street-compliant channels.
All these developments are further推动 (driving/pushing) the integration of Ethereum with traditional capital markets, allowing investors to comfortably allocate ETH assets within a familiar, compliant environment.
Two Major Upgrades
In 2025, Ethereum completed two major technical upgrades. These upgrades significantly alleviated network congestion, improved system stability, and markedly enhanced Ethereum's practicality as a trusted transaction settlement layer.
The Pectra upgrade went live in May of this year. It improved Ethereum's scalability by expanding data shards (Blobs), providing more compressed data storage space for Layer 2 networks, thereby reducing their transaction costs. This upgrade also increased Ethereum's transaction throughput, sped up transaction confirmation times, and further optimized the efficiency of applications core to Rollup scaling solutions.
Following the Pectra upgrade, the Fusaka upgrade arrived, further enhancing Ethereum's network scalability and optimizing the user experience.
Overall, Ethereum's core goal in 2025 was to optimize its evolution towards reliable financial infrastructure. Both upgrades prioritized network stability, transaction throughput, and cost predictability. These characteristics are crucial for Rollup solutions, stablecoin issuers, and institutional users needing to settle value on-chain. Although these upgrades did not create a strong short-term correlation between Ethereum network activity and ETH price, they tangibly enhanced Ethereum's reliability for scaled application scenarios.
Future Outlook
If one wants to draw a simple,粗暴 (crude/harsh) conclusion about Ethereum's development in 2025, finding a definitive answer to "Ethereum succeeded" or "Ethereum failed" is difficult.
Instead, the market presented a more intriguing, yet slightly frustrating, fact in 2025:
In 2025, Ethereum successfully entered the investment portfolios of fund issuers and the balance sheets of listed companies, and, buoyed by持续 (sustained/continuous) institutional inflows, consistently captured market attention.
However, ETH holders had a disappointing year, with the token's price movement严重脱节 (severely disconnected) from the thriving development of the Ethereum network.
Investors who bought ETH at the beginning of the year are sitting on浮亏 (paper losses) of at least 15%. Although ETH price briefly touched a new all-time high of $4,953 in August, the good times were short-lived, and its price has since retreated to near five-month lows.
Looking ahead to 2026, Ethereum will continue to lead the industry based on its solid technical upgrade achievements and its massive scale in stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization. If the Ethereum network can ride this momentum, it has the potential to translate the动能 (momentum/kinetic energy) of ecosystem development into long-term price appreciation for ETH.
