Author: Consensys
Compiled & Organized: LenaXin, ChainCatcher
Every financial transaction contains an element of trust. Ethereum's digital trust enables the digitization of vast assets, capital, and financial transactions, greatly enhancing the efficiency of the global financial system, allowing everyone from institutions to businesses to consumers to benefit.
On July 30, Ethereum celebrates its tenth anniversary. On this occasion, Consensys has published the report (The Industrialization of Trust), which outlines the investment case for Ethereum and this emerging technology category known as 'Trustware.' Trustware is infrastructure that allows for the industrialization of trust production, enabling trust to be encoded in digital goods.
Research and analysis from Consensys indicates that Ethereum has become the dominant blockchain platform, supporting over 50% of non-Bitcoin digital assets, including 60% of stablecoins, 60% of decentralized finance capital, and 80% of tokenized 'real-world assets,' such as stocks, money market funds, and bonds.
Ethereum's Breakthrough: Digital Trust and Trustware
Trustware is an infrastructure that upgrades the simulated concept of trust—such as notes and ledgers verified by human agents and auditors, backed by human insurance companies and regulators—to an equivalent digital trust concept that can be generated algorithmically.
For centuries, human civilization has relied on various forms of trust infrastructure, from tribal kinship to large institutions such as governments, insurance companies, auditing firms, and legal systems. While these systems facilitate cooperation and economic growth, they come with very high costs. It is estimated that humanity spends over $9 trillion annually on trust-related expenses, including insurance ($8.0 trillion), legal systems (over $1.0 trillion), and auditing ($290 billion). This massive expenditure highlights a fundamental problem: the current trust models cannot effectively scale in the digital age. They are analog—slower, more expensive, and more fragmented than the always-online, highly automated, and rapidly evolving digital economy that relies on them.
Trustware, through a fully algorithmic process, imbues ordinary data with the essential qualities of trust: validity and finality. Validity ensures data consistency and correctness, with mathematical certainty. Finality guarantees the permanence of data, making it irretrievable without incurring substantial costs.
Ethereum allows these attributes to be added to data in a scalable manner, without ongoing human intervention, thereby achieving trust at nearly zero marginal cost. In this way, with its powerful public network and groundbreaking cryptoeconomic algorithms capable of generating digital trust, Ethereum significantly enhances the verification of financial transactions in terms of speed, cost, security, and scale.
Investment Case
For years, investors have considered ETH to be the 'second-largest cryptocurrency.' While this is true, it is not very meaningful. Today, they realize that ETH represents explosive growth in stablecoins and other tokenized assets, which they see discussed in business channels every day and may even use in their daily lives.
They realize that ETH supports the predictive markets they see online, and ETH also underpins the new type of tokenized stocks being launched by Robinhood. With landmark legislative proposals like the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act, this wave of innovation will only intensify. Ethereum, as a platform driving the future global economy, is increasingly drawing attention.
Ethereum was born for this moment from the very beginning. In terms of security, assurance, and resilience, Ethereum is second to none. The tenth anniversary of the genesis block is also a celebration of its unparalleled achievements over the past ten years in the technology of digital and traditional assets.
Economic Security: With over $100 billion in staked capital and over a million validators, Ethereum has built robust defenses against attacks.
Network Effects: Ethereum has the deepest liquidity, the most developers (twice as many as the next blockchain), and the richest application ecosystem. The EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) standard dominates smart contract development, and all major stablecoins use Ethereum as their primary platform.
Proven adaptability and continuous upgrades: Through complex upgrades like the Merge (transition to proof of stake, reducing energy consumption by 99.95%) and Dencun (reducing aggregation fees by 90%), Ethereum has demonstrated resilience and continuous improvement in its first decade without any downtime.
Global neutrality and decentralization: Unlike other power-concentrated blockchains, Ethereum is not controlled by a single company or entity. Its over one million validator nodes are spread across more than 80 countries/regions, with over 67% of nodes operating outside the United States, proving its antifragility and reliable neutrality.
Institutional validation and adoption: Global institutions such as BlackRock, JPMorgan, Visa, and Franklin Templeton have begun utilizing Ethereum for tokenized assets, payments, and private equity investments, validating its security model and reliability. The total amount of tokenized real-world assets on Ethereum has exceeded $13 billion, with a monthly growth rate of up to 6.75%.
Despite the maturity of Ethereum's technology and the ongoing consolidation of the digital asset infrastructure market, its economic potential remains in the early stages. The total market cap of cryptocurrencies accounts for only 0.3% of global wealth, and tokenized securities represent only a small portion of capital markets.
However, as regulation becomes clearer, especially in the United States, it is accelerating the adoption of cryptocurrencies, shifting from resistance to embracing digital assets. The convergence of artificial intelligence and blockchain has led to an unprecedented demand for trustless infrastructure: as AI agents begin to transact at machine speed, they will require machine trust. Ethereum is the only infrastructure prepared for an economic environment that necessitates algorithmic mutual trust.
For institutions, holding Ether (ETH) means owning digital economic infrastructure at a price far below its ultimate value. ETH can be used to pay for network transactions and serves as a store of value. Unlike Bitcoin, ETH can also generate cash flow through staking. Moreover, like stocks, the value of ETH will also grow as the Ethereum platform becomes more popular. It combines the properties of commodities, currencies, and capital assets into a unique and highly attractive asset.
As highlighted in the Trustware report, ETH serves as economic bandwidth, securing the expected issuance and trading of assets on the platform in the coming years, which will drive its value to grow strongly.
The trust machine has been built
The trust machine has been built. It runs continuously, self-improving, creating more value and attracting more users. The question is not whether to trust Ethereum, but whether to trust the digitization of trust. If you believe, then the rationale for owning a part of the future global economic infrastructure is self-evident.
