2025 Ethereum Report Card: Won the consensus, lost the price

Author: Prathik Desai

Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News

As a steadfast ETH bull investor, I’ve developed a frustrating habit this year. Every day I open the ETH price chart and silently calculate how much my portfolio has lost. After the calculation, I close the market page, hoping to turn losses into gains sooner rather than later.

By the end of the year, I believe most investors who bought ETH at the beginning of the year are likely to feel disappointed. However, over the past 12 months, despite ETH’s price performance and wealth appreciation effects being less than ideal, the Ethereum blockchain has stood out among competing projects.

If “making money” is the standard, 2025 has undoubtedly been a terrible year. But from a broader perspective beyond token returns, holding ETH in 2025 has become more convenient, mainly thanks to the rise of market-based tools like ETFs and crypto treasury (DAT). Additionally, Ethereum’s two major upgrades—Pectra and Fusaka—completed within the year, have made this public chain easier and more efficient to support large-scale applications.

In this article, I will reveal why the development trajectory of the Ethereum network and ETH tokens in 2025 has diverged, and what this implies for their future.

Ethereum finally enters the mainstream

For most of the past two years, “institutional-grade ETH investment” has seemed like an unattainable dream for many. As of June 30, the ETH ETF, launched just a year earlier, had accumulated a little over $4 billion in inflows. At that time, listed companies had just begun to consider including ETH in their treasury.

A turning point quietly emerged in the second half of this year.

From June 1 to September 30, 2025, the cumulative capital inflow into ETH ETFs increased nearly fivefold, surpassing $10 billion.

This ETF capital surge not only brought in capital but also triggered a psychological shift in the market. It significantly lowered the barrier for ordinary investors to buy ETH, expanding its audience from blockchain developers and traders to a third group—ordinary investors seeking to allocate this second-largest global cryptocurrency asset.

This inevitably leads to another major industry transformation this year.

Ethereum welcomes new buyers

Over the past five years, influenced by the investment strategies proposed by Strategy CEO, Bitcoin treasury funds have seemingly become the only paradigm for crypto asset inclusion. Before this model revealed its flaws, it was regarded as the simplest way for companies to allocate crypto assets: listed companies buy scarce crypto assets, drive up prices, and then boost their stock prices; subsequently, they can issue new shares at a premium to raise more funds.

As a result, when ETH treasuries became a hot topic in June this year, many people were puzzled. The reason ETH treasuries gained prominence is that they can achieve functions that Bitcoin treasuries cannot. Especially after Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin announced joining the board of SharpLink Gaming and leading its $425 million ETH treasury investment strategy, the market realized the forward-looking nature of this approach.

Soon after, many companies followed SharpLink Gaming’s example.

As of now, the top five ETH treasury holders collectively hold 5.56 million ETH, accounting for over 4.6% of the total supply. At current prices, this is worth over $16 billion.

When investors hold an asset through tools like ETFs and treasuries, the asset’s attributes gradually align with “balance sheet items.” It becomes part of corporate governance frameworks, requiring regular financial disclosures, board discussions, quarterly performance updates, and oversight by risk committees.

Moreover, ETH’s staking feature gives ETH treasuries advantages that Bitcoin treasuries cannot match.

Bitcoin treasuries can only generate profits when companies sell Bitcoin for gains; ETH treasuries are different. Companies only need to hold and stake ETH to provide security for the Ethereum network, earning additional ETH as staking rewards.

If companies can combine staking yields with core business revenues, ETH treasuries can become a sustainable business model.

It is from this point that the market truly began to recognize Ethereum’s value.

The “low-profile” Ethereum finally gains attention

Long-term followers of Ethereum development know that Ethereum has never been good at proactive marketing. Without external events—such as the launch of asset wrapping tools, market cycle shifts, or new narratives—Ethereum often remains unnoticed until these external factors emerge, prompting renewed awareness of its potential.

This year, the rise of ETH treasuries and the surge in ETF capital inflows finally drew market attention to Ethereum. I measured this change in attention in a very straightforward way: by observing whether retail investors, who usually show little interest in blockchain roadmaps, have started discussing Ethereum.

From July to September this year, Google Trends data showed a significant spike in Ethereum search interest, closely matching the momentum of ETH treasuries and ETF development. These traditional asset allocation channels ignited retail investors’ curiosity about Ethereum, which further translated into increased market attention.

But hype alone is not enough. Market attention is always unpredictable—coming quickly and fading just as fast. This leads to another key reason why Ethereum supporters see 2025 as the “year of great victory”: a crucial factor often overlooked by outsiders.

On-Chain USD as the Backbone of the Internet

Looking beyond short-term price charts and over longer timeframes, the fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices are merely reflections of market sentiment swings. But stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization (RWA) are fundamentally different. They are backed by solid fundamentals and serve as bridges connecting traditional finance with decentralized finance (DeFi).

In 2025, Ethereum remains the dominant platform for on-chain USD, continuously supporting the circulation of stablecoins.

In the realm of real-world asset tokenization, Ethereum also maintains an absolute leading position.

As of writing, tokens representing real-world assets issued on the Ethereum network still account for more than half of the total value of tokenized assets worldwide. This means over half of the global tradable, manageable real-world assets are tokenized on Ethereum.

This demonstrates that ETFs have lowered the barrier for ordinary investors to buy ETH, while treasury strategies provide a compliant on-ramp through Wall Street channels, enabling leverage exposure to ETH.

All these developments are further integrating Ethereum with traditional capital markets, allowing investors to confidently allocate ETH assets within familiar, compliant environments.

Two Major Upgrades in 2025

In 2025, Ethereum completed two major technical upgrades. These upgrades significantly alleviated network congestion, improved system stability, and enhanced Ethereum’s practicality as a trusted transaction settlement layer.

The Pectra upgrade was officially launched in May this year, introducing data sharding (Blob) to increase scalability. It also provided larger compressed data storage for Layer 2 networks, reducing transaction costs. This upgrade increased transaction throughput, sped up confirmation times, and further optimized the efficiency of applications centered on Rollup scaling solutions.

Following Pectra, the Fusaka upgrade was quickly implemented, further enhancing Ethereum’s scalability and user experience.

Overall, Ethereum’s core goal in 2025 has been to evolve towards a reliable financial infrastructure. Both upgrades prioritized network stability, transaction throughput, and cost predictability. These features are crucial for Rollup scaling solutions, stablecoin issuers, and institutions conducting on-chain value settlement. Although these upgrades did not immediately correlate with increased network activity or ETH price, they have strengthened Ethereum’s reliability in large-scale application scenarios.

Future Outlook

If one were to give a simple, blunt conclusion about Ethereum’s development in 2025, it would be “Ethereum succeeded” or “Ethereum failed,” but finding a clear-cut answer is difficult.

Instead, the market in 2025 presents a more intriguing yet somewhat frustrating fact:

In 2025, Ethereum successfully entered the investment portfolios of fund issuers and the balance sheets of listed companies, maintaining market attention through continuous institutional capital inflows.

However, ETH holders experienced a disappointing year, as the token’s price trend was severely disconnected from the booming development of the Ethereum network.

Investors who bought ETH at the beginning of the year are now at a minimum 15% unrealized loss. Although ETH briefly reached a historic high of $4953 in August, the rally was short-lived, and its price has now fallen back to a near five-month low.

Looking ahead to 2026, Ethereum is expected to continue leading the industry, supported by solid technological upgrades and the large-scale circulation of stablecoins and real-world asset tokens. If Ethereum’s network can leverage these advantages to gain momentum, it may turn the development energy into long-term price growth for ETH.