1. Stablecoin Supply
Tether co-founded the dollar-pegged stablecoin with crypto exchange Bitfinex in 2015, and since these tokens began migrating on-chain in 2017, the supply of stablecoins on the Ethereum network has been expanding at an astonishing pace.
Aside from a brief decline during the worst times of the last crypto bear market, the supply of on-chain stablecoins on the Ethereum network has historically maintained a trend of 'only increasing', breaking the $100 billion mark by the end of 2024, with no signs of slowing down in recent months.
Currently, there are dozens of stablecoin issuers pegged to the dollar, including traditional financial giants like PayPal and JPMorgan. Meanwhile, the recently passed GENIUS Act in the U.S. is clearing the path for institutional adoption, and this space is also gaining attention from mainstream observers as an alternative medium for everyday payments.
2. Total Value Locked (TVL)
Ethereum is the original smart contract platform; despite multiple competing L1 chains and their integrated L2 networks siphoning off Ethereum's own locked value, the chain still ranks among the leading blockchains in total value locked (TVL).
The TVL stored in on-chain smart contracts and their related applications is the lifeblood of every crypto network: it represents the amount of value that users trust and deposit into the on-chain financial system.
Although Ethereum's TVL suffered greatly during the last bear market as cryptocurrency prices plummeted and users withdrew or migrated to competing chains, this data has seen explosive growth since April this year, setting a new cycle high of over $88 billion and actively pursuing a new all-time record.
Source: DeFiLlama
3. Active User Count
Even as casual Ethereum ecosystem user activity has migrated to L2, it has not slowed the growth of Ethereum's daily active user count, which recently reached a historic high of 580,000 unique addresses.
During the last bear market, the number of daily active addresses remained stable and continued to rise throughout 2025, with more and more users turning to Ethereum L1 for the unique properties offered by the world’s leading on-chain financial ecosystem.
When accounting for active addresses on Ethereum L2s, the growth is even more astonishing; Coinbase's Base L2 alone has 1.3 million active addresses daily. Meanwhile, leading L2s like Arbitrum, Celo, Ink, and World Chain have added another 1.2 million addresses.
Source: Token Terminal
4. Daily Transaction Volume
With the increase in active users on Ethereum L1, the number of transactions has also grown. Since October 2023, daily transaction volume has been steadily rising, maintaining a floor price of over 1.7 million transactions at the time of writing.
Although this metric can spike dramatically during periods of intense speculation, Ethereum's daily transaction volume has historically shown a trend of 'only increasing', with a cumulative total of 2.9 billion transactions since the network's inception.
When accounting for Ethereum's many L2s, this statistic appears increasingly optimistic. Including leading L2s, the daily activity volume of the Ethereum ecosystem far exceeds 500 million transactions.
Source: Token Terminal
5. Institutional Adoption
Ethereum has long been the blockchain favored by on-chain enthusiasts, and by 2025, this crypto network broke its niche positioning to become a well-known smart contract platform favored by institutional players.
President Donald Trump chose the Ethereum network as the home of his 'World Freedom Finance Project' in 2024, joining this trend early. Banking giant JPMorgan deployed deposit tokens on the Base chain this June, establishing Ethereum L1 as a dominant platform for real-world assets (RWA), controlling nearly $7 billion in value and holding 54% market share in the sector.
In recent months, Ethereum treasury companies—including those led by Consensys' Joe Lubin and Wall Street's Tom Lee—have stolen the spotlight from Bitcoin competitors with massive price outperformance. Similarly, the inflow of Ethereum ETFs has also surged sharply in recent weeks, attracting hundreds of millions of dollars daily, signaling that the Ethereum craze is sweeping the retail market.
Source: Farside
6. Censorship Resistance
Ethereum L1 prides itself on its censorship resistance, providing an open financial system by allowing anyone to broadcast transactions without worrying that their operational capabilities will be compromised by a single actor or nation-state.
Unlike other crypto networks that frequently roll back chains to prevent funds from falling into the hands of bad actors, Ethereum's culture is unique in its blind trust in code, ensuring that all transactions are final, regardless of the consequences.
These values extend to block building, as most block builders choose to process all transactions, regardless of whether addresses or smart contracts have been marked as malicious by nation-state actors.
Since President Donald Trump's inauguration, compliance with the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list has significantly decreased in 2025, and major block builders have committed to processing all transactions, regardless of their source.
Additionally, leading Ethereum developers remain committed to adopting 'inclusion lists', which would force all validators and block builders to include transactions solely based on fees.
Source: MEV Watch
7. Active Developers
The status of the Ethereum core developer community—the number of different GitHub users who have submitted code to its public repository at least once in the past 30 days—remains strong!
Despite the number of active developers being lower than the peak during the last bull market cycle, the number of Ethereum core active developers (with 186 independent contributors) still exceeds all other crypto projects.
Ethereum's EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) has become the default standard for blockchain-based development, with applications enjoying wide compatibility across mainstream chains.
Source: Token Terminal
8. Economic Security
Aside from a few brief interruptions (the longest occurring between November 2024 and February 2025), the amount of staked ETH has steadily increased since the launch of the 'Beacon Chain' staking in November 2020.
Combined with ETH's explosive price movements, the continued upward trend of staked ETH has brought Ethereum's 'economic security'—the value of ETH staked by validators to protect the network—to a historical high of $140 billion.
As Ethereum's economic security grows, various users can trade more confidently, knowing that their assets are increasingly protected from malicious actors who might manipulate the blockchain ledger.
Source: Dune Analytics
9. Contract Deployment Volume
The existence of blockchain serves to facilitate user transactions, and the contract deployment volume provides insight into the evolving scope of on-chain activity.
These contracts can range from simple token deployments to complex applications, but each new contract represents a potential new behavior or use case for users. In this way, contract deployments can serve as a signal for on-chain innovation and practical growth.
Although the volume of Ethereum contract deployments slowed at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, there has been a fierce development boom in recent months, with multiple instances of daily new contract deployment volumes exceeding 200,000. Despite developers shifting to L2s, Ethereum L1 remains a vibrant center of activity.
Source: Etherscan
10. ETH Price
Arguably, the most scrutinized success metric of any crypto project is the price of its native token. Although Ethereum struggled in competition with other alternative cryptocurrencies for years, since May 2025, the token has rebounded strongly, appreciating 75% against Bitcoin.
Ethereum has become one of the best-performing crypto assets in recent months, with enthusiasm for ETH from both crypto natives and institutional investors nearly doubling its industry dominance.
Although Ethereum is still 10% away from its all-time high, based on recent price performance, this target could be achieved in a matter of days. If viewed on a logarithmic chart, breaking this level may bring it just a step away from $10,000...
Stay tuned TREE SC HEI SOPH
