Lu Xun never said, "No matter what sins you committed in your past life, holding Ethereum counts as paying them all off." The current round of Ethereum holders never expected Ethereum to perform so poorly, once bottoming out among mainstream projects. However, it's too early to make a final judgment as the overall market trend seems far from over. If Bitcoin adoption is just beginning, then Crypto and Web3 as a whole are even earlier in their development stages. In 2025, can Ethereum be "rescued"? What "events" and "breakthroughs" are worth anticipating?

01 Inflow of Spot ETFs

At this stage, Ethereum spot ETFs have been approved for listing on U.S. stock markets for some time. Compared to Bitcoin spot ETFs, there is a certain gap in terms of capital inflow speed and volume. Besides the fact that Ethereum lacks Bitcoin's "out-of-the-box" popularity and widespread consensus, another important reason is that, compared to the pledge benefits of directly holding Ethereum, spot ETFs, which offer no additional benefits and require management fees, have no significant advantages.

However, good news for 2025 is that relevant financial institution personnel are actively promoting the listing of Ethereum spot ETFs that allow pledge operations to obtain additional returns. There is strong momentum behind this push, as financial giants are the main beneficiaries of the "hot" trading demand for crypto asset spot ETFs. Ethereum spot ETFs with pledge operations not only have potential demand but are also more likely to be approved given Trump's friendly regulatory environment upon taking office.

02 Ethereum Strategic Reserve

The ongoing promotion of a Bitcoin strategic reserve in the United States is one of the main driving forces behind Bitcoin and the crypto market. It's important to note that, in addition to gold, oil is also a strategic reserve asset in the United States. Therefore, "digital gold" Bitcoin has certain feasibility and significance as a strategic reserve. Meanwhile, Ethereum, once known as "digital oil," also has the potential to be listed as a strategic reserve asset.

Compared to Bitcoin, the Trump-supported WLFI project, an ecosystem project deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, is actually based on support from Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem, including AAVE and Chainlink. At the same time, the project's treasury has gradually begun to reserve large amounts of ETH and Ethereum ecosystem tokens, recently converting a large amount of WBTC to ETH. Analysis of the project's treasury's seven multi-signature wallets reveals that some wallet addresses are veterans in Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem. Therefore, the project team has a high level of understanding of Ethereum and its ecosystem, and their operations are relatively professional.

Given that the team behind Trump has taken the lead in launching Ethereum ecosystem adoption projects, we can infer that they have a high degree of recognition for the subsequent development of Ethereum and its ecosystem, supporting the development of high-tech industries such as Web3, which aligns with Trump's "America First" policy. Therefore, the possibility of Ethereum being mentioned as a strategic reserve asset in 2025 is not low.

03 Ethereum's Next Major Upgrade

Due to Ethereum's underwhelming performance, its next major upgrade, named "Pectra," has received little attention. It is reported that ten EIP improvement protocols have been added to this upgrade plan, mainly involving user experience and support optimization for Layer 2. The main highlights are as follows:

1. Optimization of Account Abstraction

This upgrade will optimize the user experience of wallets, enabling ordinary wallet addresses to have the complex functions and flexible operations of "contract wallets," such as "gas payment delegation, social recovery, multi-signature," etc. These optimizations will further lower the user entry barrier, allowing users to have a Web2-like experience when using Web3 applications, laying the foundation for large-scale adoption of future Web3 applications.

1. Support Optimization for Layer 2

Provide more data space (blobs) for Layer 2 solutions to enhance Ethereum's scalability. Re-evaluate and adjust the cost of calldata to optimize block throughput and storage. Simply put, this involves expanding Layer 2 data space and optimizing fees, resulting in larger Layer 2 capacity and lower fees.

1. Enhanced Security and Flexibility for Validators

Optimize the voting processing, withdrawal operations, and other aspects of validators to enhance security and efficiency. At the same time, increase the pledge limit to 32 ETH, equivalent to merging operational validation nodes, reducing operational and maintenance pressure, improving efficiency, and alleviating the pressure of peer-to-peer messaging and data storage among a large number of node networks.

In summary, Ethereum's Pectra upgrade will provide support at the technical level for an Ethereum ecosystem with a more user-friendly experience, higher scalability, and a more stable node network.

04 Ecosystem Application Boom and Technological Progress

At this stage, more and more institutions are building Web3 applications and infrastructure solutions on Ethereum, with Ethereum's ecosystem being the preferred choice. This includes DeFi projects from the Trump family, Sony's Layer 2, Deutsche Bank's Layer 2, and many others.

Ethereum's ecosystem is mature, rich, diverse, and leading in terms of technical resource reserves, development history, development team support, on-chain capital volume, client security, and wallet user experience. Similarly, in the next phase of the 2025 market trend, whether it's the strong recovery of DeFi or the popularity of sectors such as AI Agents, Ethereum, as the underlying infrastructure, will greatly benefit from the adoption of these ecosystem applications and the prosperity of on-chain activities. These benefits include but are not limited to capital inflows, gas consumption, and token supply deflation.

With the launch of Unichain, OP Superchain has added another heavyweight player. Cross-chain liquidity for Layer 2 is expected to make progress in 2025. Combined with Ethereum's own upgrade and optimization support, the potential formed by various Layer 2 groups will combine to exert unprecedented competitive pressure on some high-performance new public chains.

In the past, some people claimed that Ethereum's Layer 2 was a failure, draining resources from the mainnet without bringing any benefits. However, we have recently witnessed the prosperity of Layer 2. Data from ultra sound money shows that Layer 2 blob fees have become one of the major gas burners on the Ethereum mainnet, demonstrating the success of Layer 2 scaling solutions.

The real-time statistical data chart from L2Beat also reflects that the funds flowing into Layer 2 exceed $55 billion. In terms of transaction volume, the total scaling amplitude is over 2500% compared to the original single mainnet.

For outsider companies and institutions like Sony and Deutsche Bank, Layer 2 is an excellent entry point for Web3 businesses. It requires no significant technical reserves or resource investment to start and natively obtains support from the Ethereum ecosystem community. Therefore, under the successful leadership of these institutions, the true institutional adoption wave of Layer 2 will soon arrive.

05 Summary

Actually, many people are aware that Ethereum and its ecosystem have obvious advantages in various aspects. It's just that they didn't expect Ethereum's current size to be as easily driven by funds as in the previous two market cycles. Obviously, this is not an easy task. Just like Bitcoin, it quickly rose due to substantial institutional capital inflows into spot ETFs and strong expectations of being listed as a U.S. strategic reserve asset. However, compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum has the additional advantages of technological upgrades and the development of the Web3 ecosystem. There are still many highlights to look forward to in 2025. Let's wait and see.

Lu Xun never said, "No matter what sins you committed in your past life, holding Ethereum counts as paying them all off." The current round of Ethereum holders never expected Ethereum to perform so poorly, once bottoming out among mainstream projects. However, it's too early to make a final judgment as the overall market trend seems far from over. If Bitcoin adoption is just beginning, then Crypto and Web3 as a whole are even earlier in their development stages. In 2025, can Ethereum be "rescued"? What "events" and "breakthroughs" are worth anticipating?

01 Inflow of Spot ETFs

At this stage, Ethereum spot ETFs have been approved for listing on U.S. stock markets for some time. Compared to Bitcoin spot ETFs, there is a certain gap in terms of capital inflow speed and volume. Besides the fact that Ethereum lacks Bitcoin's "out-of-the-box" popularity and widespread consensus, another important reason is that, compared to the pledge benefits of directly holding Ethereum, spot ETFs, which offer no additional benefits and require management fees, have no significant advantages.

However, good news for 2025 is that relevant financial institution personnel are actively promoting the listing of Ethereum spot ETFs that allow pledge operations to obtain additional returns. There is strong momentum behind this push, as financial giants are the main beneficiaries of the "hot" trading demand for crypto asset spot ETFs. Ethereum spot ETFs with pledge operations not only have potential demand but are also more likely to be approved given Trump's friendly regulatory environment upon taking office.

02 Ethereum Strategic Reserve

The ongoing promotion of a Bitcoin strategic reserve in the United States is one of the main driving forces behind Bitcoin and the crypto market. It's important to note that, in addition to gold, oil is also a strategic reserve asset in the United States. Therefore, "digital gold" Bitcoin has certain feasibility and significance as a strategic reserve. Meanwhile, Ethereum, once known as "digital oil," also has the potential to be listed as a strategic reserve asset.

Compared to Bitcoin, the Trump-supported WLFI project, an ecosystem project deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, is actually based on support from Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem, including AAVE and Chainlink. At the same time, the project's treasury has gradually begun to reserve large amounts of ETH and Ethereum ecosystem tokens, recently converting a large amount of WBTC to ETH. Analysis of the project's treasury's seven multi-signature wallets reveals that some wallet addresses are veterans in Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem. Therefore, the project team has a high level of understanding of Ethereum and its ecosystem, and their operations are relatively professional.

Given that the team behind Trump has taken the lead in launching Ethereum ecosystem adoption projects, we can infer that they have a high degree of recognition for the subsequent development of Ethereum and its ecosystem, supporting the development of high-tech industries such as Web3, which aligns with Trump's "America First" policy. Therefore, the possibility of Ethereum being mentioned as a strategic reserve asset in 2025 is not low.

03 Ethereum's Next Major Upgrade

Due to Ethereum's underwhelming performance, its next major upgrade, named "Pectra," has received little attention. It is reported that ten EIP improvement protocols have been added to this upgrade plan, mainly involving user experience and support optimization for Layer 2. The main highlights are as follows:

1. Optimization of Account Abstraction

This upgrade will optimize the user experience of wallets, enabling ordinary wallet addresses to have the complex functions and flexible operations of "contract wallets," such as "gas payment delegation, social recovery, multi-signature," etc. These optimizations will further lower the user entry barrier, allowing users to have a Web2-like experience when using Web3 applications, laying the foundation for large-scale adoption of future Web3 applications.

1. Support Optimization for Layer 2

Provide more data space (blobs) for Layer 2 solutions to enhance Ethereum's scalability. Re-evaluate and adjust the cost of calldata to optimize block throughput and storage. Simply put, this involves expanding Layer 2 data space and optimizing fees, resulting in larger Layer 2 capacity and lower fees.

1. Enhanced Security and Flexibility for Validators

Optimize the voting processing, withdrawal operations, and other aspects of validators to enhance security and efficiency. At the same time, increase the pledge limit to 32 ETH, equivalent to merging operational validation nodes, reducing operational and maintenance pressure, improving efficiency, and alleviating the pressure of peer-to-peer messaging and data storage among a large number of node networks.

In summary, Ethereum's Pectra upgrade will provide support at the technical level for an Ethereum ecosystem with a more user-friendly experience, higher scalability, and a more stable node network.

04 Ecosystem Application Boom and Technological Progress

At this stage, more and more institutions are building Web3 applications and infrastructure solutions on Ethereum, with Ethereum's ecosystem being the preferred choice. This includes DeFi projects from the Trump family, Sony's Layer 2, Deutsche Bank's Layer 2, and many others.

Ethereum's ecosystem is mature, rich, diverse, and leading in terms of technical resource reserves, development history, development team support, on-chain capital volume, client security, and wallet user experience. Similarly, in the next phase of the 2025 market trend, whether it's the strong recovery of DeFi or the popularity of sectors such as AI Agents, Ethereum, as the underlying infrastructure, will greatly benefit from the adoption of these ecosystem applications and the prosperity of on-chain activities. These benefits include but are not limited to capital inflows, gas consumption, and token supply deflation.

With the launch of Unichain, OP Superchain has added another heavyweight player. Cross-chain liquidity for Layer 2 is expected to make progress in 2025. Combined with Ethereum's own upgrade and optimization support, the potential formed by various Layer 2 groups will combine to exert unprecedented competitive pressure on some high-performance new public chains.

In the past, some people claimed that Ethereum's Layer 2 was a failure, draining resources from the mainnet without bringing any benefits. However, we have recently witnessed the prosperity of Layer 2. Data from ultra sound money shows that Layer 2 blob fees have become one of the major gas burners on the Ethereum mainnet, demonstrating the success of Layer 2 scaling solutions.

The real-time statistical data chart from L2Beat also reflects that the funds flowing into Layer 2 exceed $55 billion. In terms of transaction volume, the total scaling amplitude is over 2500% compared to the original single mainnet.

For outsider companies and institutions like Sony and Deutsche Bank, Layer 2 is an excellent entry point for Web3 businesses. It requires no significant technical reserves or resource investment to start and natively obtains support from the Ethereum ecosystem community. Therefore, under the successful leadership of these institutions, the true institutional adoption wave of Layer 2 will soon arrive.

05 Summary

Actually, many people are aware that Ethereum and its ecosystem have obvious advantages in various aspects. It's just that they didn't expect Ethereum's current size to be as easily driven by funds as in the previous two market cycles. Obviously, this is not an easy task. Just like Bitcoin, it quickly rose due to substantial institutional capital inflows into spot ETFs and strong expectations of being listed as a U.S. strategic reserve asset. However, compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum has the additional advantages of technological upgrades and the development of the Web3 ecosystem. There are still many highlights to look forward to in 2025. Let's wait and see.