Ethereum's 10th Anniversary: 7 Key Dimensions Revealing Why the ETH Rise Has Just Begun?

Abstract: Analyzing the key drivers behind the recent significant rise of ETH. Author: Biteye core contributor @viee7227 Ethereum has been around for ten years, experiencing ups and downs. Just as the market is heating up again, the price of ETH seems to be only a step away from its all-time high. This article analyzes seven dimensions including institutional accumulation and the ETF craze, changes in foundations, K-line technical indicators, on-chain data, the rise of RWA and stablecoins, and roadmaps. Perhaps this round of ETH pump has only just begun.

1. Concept stocks of ETH reserves Recently, the ETH market has seen exceptionally strong buying interest, with many listed companies and asset management institutions actively increasing their holdings, even incorporating ETH into their financial strategic core. At the same time, ETH reserve concept stocks have surged, becoming a new favorite in the U.S. stock market. The landmark event that prompted Wall Street to embrace Ethereum was the high-profile bet on ETH by Thomas Lee, a well-known strategist on Wall Street and co-founder of Fundstrat. He was appointed chairman of Bitmine in 2025, directly driving this former Bitcoin mining company to transform into an Ethereum asset firm. Under Lee's leadership, Bitmine quickly accumulated over 600,000 ETH positions in the market, valued at over $3 billion, as a major asset in its financial reserves. It was also under his marketing inspiration that Wall Street's excitement was ignited, with several U.S. publicly traded companies announcing their purchase of ETH as part of their asset allocation. For example, Bit Digital previously converted its held BTC into ETH, spending $172 million to acquire 100,000 ETH, and has now accumulated over 120,000 ETH; SharpLink Gaming currently holds approximately 438,000 ETH, with a total value of about $1.09 billion. This series of actions indicates that institutional investors are viewing Ethereum as a strategic reserve asset similar to Bitcoin, and the market recognition of Ethereum has significantly increased, further reinforcing the bullish expectations.
2. ETF With the ETH price rising, substantial off-market funds are flooding into Ethereum ETFs. According to SoSoValue data, as of July 29 Eastern Time, the total net inflow of Ethereum spot ETFs reached $219 million, continuing a net inflow for 18 days since July 3. The Ethereum spot ETF with the highest single-day net inflow is Blackrock ETF ETHA, with a net inflow of $224 million in a single day, and the historical total net inflow of ETHA has reached $9.704 billion. On July 16, nine Ethereum spot ETFs in the United States collectively attracted over $726 million in net inflow, setting a record for the highest single-day inflow since their launch in July last year. In contrast, during the same period, the Bitcoin ETF in the United States cooled down after experiencing a surge at the beginning of the year, with a slight net outflow occurring for several consecutive days in late July. This indicates that some funds have been rebalanced from the BTC sector to the ETH sector, reflecting an increase in institutional confidence in the application prospects of Ethereum. Currently, the market capitalization of Bitcoin ETFs accounts for 6.49% of the total market capitalization of Bitcoin, while the Ethereum ETF is only 4.71%. In comparison, there is still significant growth potential for funds flowing into Ethereum through ETF channels.

Source: SoSoValue Looking ahead, in addition to spot ETFs, Ethereum staking yield ETFs are also on the way. On July 17, BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust Fund (ETHA) officially submitted the 19b-4 document to the SEC, proposing to introduce staking features for its Ethereum ETF. According to analysts' predictions, the U.S. is expected to approve the first batch of ETH staking ETFs in the second half of 2025. Such products will provide an annual staking yield of 3-5% based on holding spot Ethereum, making them more attractive to institutions. The most direct impact of the ETF effect on Ethereum is the enhancement of liquidity and the ceiling of demand. After institutions have allocated BTC ETFs, ETH ETFs have become the only option next. With ETFs, large funds at the level of hundreds of billions of dollars can easily allocate assets, which undoubtedly significantly enhances the investment characteristics and market depth of ETH, making it one of the important external factors supporting a long-term bullish outlook. Three, Ethereum Foundation The recent strength of Ethereum is also closely related to the changes in the management team. The Ethereum Foundation has experienced management adjustments over the past year. In March 2025, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak were newly appointed as co-executive directors of the Foundation. This dual leadership model will decentralize decision-making authority, reduce single point dependence, and introduce more professional management beyond technical leaders like Vitalik, promoting efficiency improvements. It retains the community-driven open-source spirit while enhancing external communication and strategic execution, which is conducive to promoting positive interactions between Ethereum and institutions and regulators. In addition, Danny Ryan, a former core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, has joined the Etherealize project founded by former banker Vivek Raman, aiming to introduce ETH into the mainstream financial system on Wall Street through educating traditional institutions and market promotion. This marks the first time the core Ethereum team has actively integrated into the traditional financial ecosystem, and the valuation logic of ETH will transform towards institutionalization, significantly enhancing its long-term price support. 4. K-line Technical Indicators Ethereum has recently shown a strong rise in the market. Over the past month, the price of ETH surged by about 60% from around $2400, approaching the $4000 mark in late July. The increase far exceeds the market average, reflecting optimistic expectations for Ethereum. From a technical indicator perspective, the ETH/BTC pair has ended a long period of sideways consolidation over the past three months and broke through a key range upwards in mid-July, rising 40% in a single month. This indicates a shift in capital preference from Bitcoin dominance to Ethereum, reflecting a resurgence in market preference for risk assets.

Source: TradingView Additionally, the RSI (Relative Strength Index) of ETH fell to around 30 on the weekly K-line in April, which has historically been regarded as a "buying zone at lows." Data shows that whenever the RSI reaches this range (30-40), ETH often experiences a significant rise. For example, during the 2023–2024 period, the last time this signal appeared was accompanied by an increase of over 290% in ETH.

Source: TradingView Analyst @MikybullCrypto pointed out this round of buy signals back in April, when he judged it to be a "very rare buying point that should not be ignored," predicting that ETH would double thereafter. He recently reiterated this view, believing that if the RSI continues to rise to high levels, the price of Ethereum may reach the range of 7000 to 10000 dollars. This means that, from a technical perspective, this round of ETH pump may not be over yet.

Five, On-chain indicators From on-chain data, Ethereum's activity has significantly increased. Transaction Activity: The average daily transaction volume on the Ethereum mainnet has remained stable in recent months, with approximately 42 million transactions in June 2025 (about 1.4 million per day), consistent with the previous months. It is noteworthy that although the on-chain Gas fees are currently low, this may not be due to a decrease in users, but rather an increase in network processing capacity following the mainnet upgrade, leading to lower costs per transaction. According to data from Nansen, the number of active addresses on Ethereum has grown by 16.3% over the past 30 days, and the number of transactions has increased by 14.2% in the same period, reaching an average of 1.62 million transactions per day on July 22, setting a new high in nearly six months. Active on-chain activity indicates that more users and applications are utilizing the Ethereum network.

Source: Nansen On-chain transaction fees: With the recent recovery of cryptocurrency prices and on-chain activities, Ethereum's fee revenue has also rebounded, surpassing other public chains again, and returning to the second position in on-chain fee revenue in the second quarter of 2025. According to statistics from Artemis, Ethereum's total network fee revenue in June was approximately $39.1 million, second only to Tron, which to some extent reflects the return of demand for the Ethereum network.

Source: Artemis Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi: The chart below from DefiLlama shows that Ethereum's TVL rose from $60.2 billion on June 28 to a three-year high of $85.9 billion on July 28, with an increase of over 42% within the month. Additionally, the total TVL across the DeFi network broke through $153 billion in late July, setting a new three-year high, of which nearly 60% is locked in Ethereum. However, it is noteworthy that Ethereum's price increased by 59.9% during the same period, surpassing the TVL growth rate. Furthermore, when measuring the TVL growth rate in ETH terms, there was a 1% decline, indicating that the recent high in TVL was mainly driven by the rise in ETH prices. This suggests that if asset prices retrace in the future, the TVL metric may also correspondingly decline.

Source: Defillama (The above image is ETH TVL) Pledge situation: It is worth mentioning that the scale of Ethereum staking has reached new highs - currently, there are over 36 million ETH staked, close to 30% of the current total supply. These locked ETH effectively reduce the circulating supply, decreasing selling pressure from a supply and demand perspective. Although there has recently been a queue of over 500,000 ETH awaiting unstaking, a large amount of new staking has entered simultaneously, which can hedge against the impact of the large exits, and the coin price remains strong, so there is no need to panic excessively.

Source: Cryptoquant

Source: validatorqueue ETH inflation situation: It is worth noting that the current Ethereum network is showing a slight inflation status, and the actual inflation rate is far lower than the general market perception. According to statistics, the average annual net inflation rate of Ethereum (+0.117%) in the nearly three years since the merge is more than 11 times lower than Bitcoin's inflation rate (+1.338%). The logic of ETH is that the more it is used, the more it is burned, forming a positive cycle for network activity. This means that the traditional statement of "ETH unlimited inflation" is no longer valid. In the past few years, ETH has significantly low inflation, which may also be one of the important supporting forces in its rise logic.

Source: ultrasound.money 、 @LeonWaidmann The rise in trading volume + the recovery of transaction fees + staking and locking up + low inflation levels, multiple on-chain indicators jointly support the positive fundamentals of Ethereum, providing strong support for the continued strength of ETH prices. Six, RWA and stablecoin narrative By deeply analyzing the key indicators of major on-chain networks supporting RWA (refer to the table below), it can be seen that Ethereum dominates the RWA and stablecoin market.

Source: RWA.xyz RWA on-chain: 2025 is referred to as the "RWA Year" by many industry insiders, with a large number of real-world assets being tokenized through the Ethereum ecosystem. According to data from RWA.xyz, as of July 29, 2025, over 341 types of RWA assets have been hosted on Ethereum, covering government bonds, real estate equity, private equity, etc., accounting for approximately 55.2% of the entire on-chain RWA market, reaching $7 billion, leading all blockchains, about three times that of the second place ZKsync. For example, the scale of BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL has exceeded $2.4 billion, with over 90% of the assets still hosted on Ethereum. As the scale of the RWA tokenization market continues to break through in the future, Ethereum is expected to capture the largest share.

Source: RWA.xyz Stablecoin Trend: Ethereum continues to solidify its position as the on-chain dollar carrier by 2025. As of July 29, 2025, the supply of stablecoins operating on Ethereum accounts for over 54% of the entire market, ranking first among all public chains. With a total volume of approximately $250 billion, over $137.7 billion of stablecoins (such as USDT, USDC, etc.) are circulating on the Ethereum network.

Source: RWA.xyz It is important to emphasize that in the past, ETH was more often seen as a "super Bitcoin" cryptocurrency asset. However, now, with the substantial accumulation of stablecoins and RWA, ETH possesses a broader value support. On one hand, ETH is indispensable as the "digital oil" for paying Gas; every stablecoin transfer and every RWA issuance requires burning a small amount of ETH. On the other hand, the "productive asset" attribute of ETH is increasingly prominent—staking ETH can yield native returns, which is similar to holding US Treasuries for interest, aligning with traditional capital's preference for income-generating reserve assets. When entering a rate cut cycle, the staking yield of ETH may surpass that of government bonds, and with significant upward potential, this makes ETH very attractive. Thomas Lee has publicly stated that Ethereum, as a platform for stablecoins and RWA, has limitless prospects, making it the preferred choice for Wall Street's layout on compliant chains. Lee believes that the value of the Ethereum network is severely underestimated, and its "fair value" should be in the range of $10,000 to $15,000, with over ten times appreciation potential in the coming years. In summary, the rise of stablecoins and RWA is redefining the investment value of ETH, and it also gives Ethereum the opportunity to become a global digital dollar clearing network. This is one of the important reasons why institutional investors dare to allocate ETH in large amounts recently. 7. Ethereum Technology Roadmap Ethereum has been continuously iterating and upgrading for ten years, and the progress of its technical roadmap is an important internal driving force for the rise of ETH.

The latest major upgrade - the Pectra upgrade, was successfully implemented on May 7, 2025. It integrates two sub-proposals, Prague and Electra, covering changes to the execution layer and consensus layer. It introduces account abstraction (EIP-7702), an increase in the validator staking cap (to 2048 ETH), data expansion (increase in blobs), a more flexible exit mechanism, and BLS precompiles, aiming to enhance scalability and user experience, paving the way for future sharding and Verkle trees, and is a key step in Ethereum's medium to long-term roadmap. In the next phase, the Fusaka upgrade is expected to go live around the end of 2025, which will expand the number of data blobs per block by 8 times and introduce PeerDAS technology to enhance on-chain data availability. Overall, the Ethereum development roadmap has progressed as planned over the past quarters with Proto-Danksharding, deepening account abstraction, data expansion, and reforms in the validator mechanism, continuously enhancing Ethereum's performance. Looking ahead, Ethereum will focus on completing Danksharding full sharding, achieving Statelessness, and improving various modular components, while the enhancement of Ethereum's performance will also lay a solid foundation for the long-term value of ETH. Summary In summary, standing at the milestone of Ethereum's tenth anniversary, we can see the resonance between the internal fundamentals and the external environment: core indicators are improving, technology upgrades are ongoing, and team governance is optimized, making the Ethereum network more robust; at the same time, the emerging narratives of stablecoins and RWA, along with the incremental funds brought by ETFs, are injecting a continuous pump of momentum into ETH. For this reason, more and more asset management institutions and analysts hold an optimistic view on Ethereum's medium to long-term prospects, believing it is likely to challenge new heights in the coming years. Of course, challenges from other public chains, regulatory changes, and so on may still bring volatility. But one thing is certain: at the starting point of the next decade, ETH is transforming towards "new financial infrastructure," and the excitement may just be beginning.