A few days ago, while browsing news, I was jolted awake by a piece of information: a company listed on Nasdaq, SharpLink, which holds a massive inventory of Ethereum, officially announced that it will gradually deploy up to 200 million USD worth of ETH onto Linea, allowing this "corporate treasury" to generate returns on-chain. This is not at all comparable to the usual news we see on Twitter about "XX fund piloting a certain chain"; it feels more like the beginning of traditional companies moving their cash management systems entirely onto the chain. For Linea, this is a blatant vote: handing over a true "treasury" to you for backing.
A close look at SharpLink's plan reveals a wealth of information. It is not simply about throwing ETH into a high-risk farm with a YOLO mentality, but rather using infrastructures like ether.fi and EigenCloud to first natively stake ETH, then layer on DeFi strategies, all while the entire arrangement operates under the protective umbrella of the compliant custodian Anchorage Digital, utilizing a very typical 'Digital Asset Treasury (DAT)' architecture. The premise behind this is that Linea must pass all checks on performance, compatibility, security, and compliance narrative; otherwise, a publicly listed company would not be able to move such a large ETH position for a long-term plan.
Looking back at Linea's actions over the past few months, you'll find that SharpLink's move is not an isolated incident but a natural outcome of Linea's consistent emphasis on an 'ETH-first roadmap.' Recently, Linea's official website clearly states its positioning: this is an L2 built from first principles to enhance Ethereum and the entire ETH economy, with core design revolving around ETH. In their latest product roadmap, they have outlined three major goals: to enable ETH bridged to Linea to earn yields through native staking at the protocol layer, to burn 20% of net fees in ETH form, and to allocate 85% of tokens long-term to users and Builders, locking in 'ETH capital' firmly on this chain. From this perspective, SharpLink is merely the first institutional player to step forward and validate this design with real money.
During this time, I have also taken on a bit of the 'trend-following corporate finance' flavor, treating a small portion of ETH that I do not plan to move for a long time as a mini treasury and moving it onto Linea for experimentation. The most intuitive feelings are twofold: first, operational costs have indeed come down. While doing staking, re-staking, and layering on a bit of DeFi strategies on the Ethereum mainnet, you can clearly feel that 'every click is burning money,' whereas on Linea, the on-chain friction costs of the same set of maneuvers have reduced by a dimension; second, asset scheduling is much smoother. After bridging over, various native yield scenarios and DeFi layers surrounding ETH are basically aligned on one line, making it immediately evident that 'this chain is just helping ETH work.' This experience is completely different from the previous sense of 'first staking on the mainnet, then bridging derivatives, and swapping for synthetic assets.'
This success relies on the accumulation of foundational data by Linea over the past year. According to DappRadar's statistics, in 2024, Linea's daily active wallets have increased by 370% year-on-year, on-chain transaction volume has surged by over 500%, and the transaction volume of smart contracts has skyrocketed more than 17 times, with TVL also increasing several times during the same period. What’s interesting is that these figures are not artificially inflated by a single DeFi sector but have been significantly driven by social dApps and gaming applications, such as on-chain email, IM, and lightweight social mini-games, which constitute the liveliest part of Linea. For users like me, who often click randomly with small accounts, the biggest takeaway is this: actions like sending messages, liking, and on-chain voting, which 'originally weren't worth putting on-chain,' have finally become cost-acceptable on Linea, and over time, you might even forget that you are completing these tasks on-chain.
Linea's official team has also begun to publicly discuss more aggressive scaling directions—building L3 and Appchains on top of itself to separate out some ultra-high-frequency scenarios, such as casual games and complex social interactions, providing them with customized block space and execution environments. This may not be so intuitive for large-scale treasury management like SharpLink, but for ordinary players and Builders like us, it signifies a clearer technological evolution route: first, use zkEVM L2 to establish 'Ethereum-style security + low cost' as infrastructure, then use L3 to accommodate high-frequency business that could only run on centralized servers, pushing the boundary of the chain one step forward.
From an ecological perspective, Linea is no longer satisfied with the old method of 'giving out a little incentive to attract people to complete tasks' and is trying to make everyday use, creation, and development into long-term activities. A typical example is the ongoing Life on Linea series competition, which encourages ordinary users to showcase their on-chain lives with content on platforms like X, YouTube, and TikTok, offering 2.5 ETH as a weekly prize; on the other hand, it has opened the Build on Linea track for Builders to see who can bring the most interesting applications onto the platform. For someone like me, who is already rambling on Binance Square and Twitter, the benefit of such activities is that you already know how to write, post, and use; now, there's an additional layer of 'on-chain credentials + real rewards,' tightening the relationship between content creators and the chain itself.
If we pull back the lens further, we can see that institutions and communities are forming an interesting convergence on the same timeline regarding Linea. On one side are companies like SharpLink, moving ETH treasuries worth $200 million up here, clearly stating it’s to achieve better ETH-denominated returns while ensuring safety and compliance; on the other side are ordinary users participating in Life on Linea and frequently interacting within various DeFi and social applications, giving the chain true daily activity. In between, there are long-term activities targeting developers, burning mechanisms, and ZK calculations, such as Exponent and Burn Mechanism Go-Live, connecting the protocol layer and application layer. This three-dimensional structure of 'top-level treasury management, bottom-level daily social interactions, and middle-level developer incentives' is honestly something I haven't seen in most previous L2s.
As a participant, my attitude towards Linea is now very straightforward: I don't see it as a chain that relies on short-term airdrops and incentives to grab attention, but rather as a 'long-term parking lot + operational arena' for ETH capital in the L2 era. If you are an ordinary user, you can start by using a small amount of ETH as a testbed, transferring money to Linea via the official bridge, trying out a few DEXs, social, or tool dApps you already plan to use, making the act of 'playing with the chain' a seamless operation; if you are a content creator, consider keeping an eye on activities like Life on Linea, accumulating some on-chain reputation and extra earnings from outputs you’re already producing; if you are a Builder, then the signals from SharpLink and Exponent are already clear enough: this chain is attempting to become a crossroads for ETH capital and real applications, and whether to bet a portion of your time and resources here is worth serious consideration.
In conclusion, I still maintain that: bull and bear markets, prices, and emotions change, but those infrastructures that truly accommodate capital, applications, and institutional innovation will prove themselves over time. Throughout my recent tests and observations, Linea has at least presented a logically coherent story: from the ETH-first protocol design to treasury-level capital migration, and to long-term activities centered around Builders and users, it is gradually clarifying the conclusion that 'this chain is worth putting money, code, and effort into.' As for whether you should get on board, that decision is yours based on your investment and time allocation.
