Ethereum News Today: Ethereum Surges 30% in Q2 2025 Driven by Institutional Demand

Ethereum and other altcoins have experienced a significant surge in momentum, driven by institutional demand and favorable legislative policies. This trend has been particularly pronounced in the second quarter of 2025, with Ethereum (ETH) leading the charge. After a challenging first quarter, where ETH declined by nearly 12%, the second quarter saw a remarkable rebound of approximately 30%, more than offsetting earlier losses. This recovery has been supported by a combination of structural and demand-driven catalysts, including renewed capital flow into Ethereum-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and network dynamics that have tightened the supply of ETH.

In June, spot ETH ETFs attracted $1.13 billion, with a major financial institution adding over $500 million worth of ETH in just two weeks. Additionally, the number of ETH staked surpassed 35 million, effectively removing about 28% of the circulating supply from trading activity. Validator contracts now hold nearly $96 billion in ETH, contributing to supply tightening. The prominence of stablecoins in 2025 has also highlighted Ethereum’s role as their primary foundation, with a major financial institution's public listing redirecting attention to the USD Coin (USDC) ecosystem, which is largely built on Ethereum.

Ethereum’s upward trajectory has been further bolstered by its position as the underlying architecture for tokenized money, lending markets, and asset settlement. As of mid-2025, Ethereum accounts for over 55% of tokenized assets across public blockchains. This narrative is supported by real-world asset tokenization, which is becoming a key part of Ethereum’s value proposition. Despite these gains, Ethereum’s market cap remains far below Bitcoin’s, with ETH’s valuation standing near $400 billion compared to Bitcoin’s $2.3 trillion.

Ethereum developers have continued to advance key protocol upgrades, with the “Pectra” hard fork implemented in May. This update merged two separate upgrade tracks into a unified release, introducing over a dozen technical improvements. Notable additions include EIP-7702, which advances native account abstraction, and a new cryptographic framework, BLS12-381 precompiles, which enhances support for privacy-preserving applications. The upgrade also improved the staking experience and introduced the Ethereum Object Format (EOF), a newly designed system that helps streamline contract code and improve safety. Further refinements to Ethereum’s data “blob” mechanism continued the network’s progress toward more scalable data availability.

Two additional upgrades, Fusaka and Glamsterdam, are already in development. Fusaka, expected later in 2025, will introduce PeerDAS, a data sampling technique that enables nodes to verify large volumes of blockchain data more efficiently. Glamsterdam, planned as a follow-up, will focus on optimizing gas costs and improving broader network performance. These upgrades fit into Ethereum’s long-term roadmap, which aims to make the network capable of processing over 100,000 transactions per second through a rollup-centric model, while preserving decentralization and security.

Corporate strategies reflect a deeper conviction in ETH, with public disclosures showing a steady rise in corporate ETH accumulation. In mid-2025 alone, public companies acquired over $1.6 billion worth of ETH. A major gaming company, under the leadership of one of Ethereum’s original co-founders, restructured itself into an Ethereum-focused holding company and acquired approximately 280,000 ETH, valued at more than $840 million. A Nasdaq-listed company shifted its focus entirely to Ethereum in June 2025, building a treasury of over $436 million. Several other firms have announced related strategies, with a major mining company reporting that its Ethereum holdings had exceeded $1 billion, and another company increasing its Ether reserves to nearly 29,000 ETH.

Ethereum continues to lead in ecosystem depth and capital concentration, while other smart contract platforms like Solana (SOL) and BNB Chain (BNB) have grown quickly. Solana and BNB Chain stand out among the challengers, attracting large user bases and sustaining high daily activity by focusing on fast throughput and low transaction fees. In terms of value secured on-chain, Ethereum remains the dominant network, holding close to 60% of the total value locked across major DeFi protocols, amounting to around $84.5 billion. Ethereum’s broad ecosystem supports nearly 1,400 decentralized applications, compared to Solana’s 230 applications.

Activity-based metrics, however, tell a different story. Solana consistently processes over 100 million transactions per day, far exceeding Ethereum’s daily average of 1 to 1.5 million. Solana also leads in daily active wallets, occasionally surpassing 3 million, while Ethereum tends to range between 400,000 and 500,000. BNB Chain has shown similar momentum, recording close to 2 million daily users and producing approximately 115,000 blocks each day. These figures highlight high-frequency usage, but they do not fully reflect economic density. Ethereum still generates higher daily fee revenue, reaching $3.24 million as of July, which suggests that users conducting larger-value transactions continue to favor the network.

Network decentralization also remains a key differentiator. Ethereum is supported by more than 500,000 validators, contributing to its resilience and trust assumptions. Solana, with a smaller validator set and more demanding hardware requirements, has drawn scrutiny over potential centralization risks. The result is a fragmented but complementary market, with Solana and BNB Chain leading in transaction volume and retail-level participation, often driven by applications involving meme tokens, gaming, NFTs, or micro-scale DeFi. Ethereum, on the other hand, remains the primary venue for high-value financial activity and deeper liquidity, anchoring most of DeFi’s total value and generating higher protocol-level revenue despite lower raw activity.