Bitwise knowledge exhibits Ethereum now handles extra institutional stablecoin flows than retail retail trades.
Ethereum (ETH) isn’t only for non-fungible tokens or and decentralized finance degens anymore. In line with a brand new evaluation from Bitwise Europe, the community’s base layer is quietly remodeling right into a heavyweight settlement system for institutional cash — whereas retail exercise shifts elsewhere.
The info reveals that Ethereum is “evolving from a retail toll road to a freight terminal for institutional-grade use cases” as stablecoin transactions now account for almost all of on-chain exercise. With greater than $127 billion in stablecoins circulating on Ethereum’s blockchain, the development suggests establishments are more and more utilizing the community “for institutional treasury flows and on-chain dollars,” the analysts say.
In the meantime, the DeFi frenzy and NFT mania that when characterised Ethereum have largely migrated to layer-2 options.
“NFT activity spiked sharply during the 2021–2022 cycle but has since dropped significantly. This reflects both market cooling and migration to L2s, which now harbour new NFT launches.”
Bitwise Europe
Ethereum’s mainnet now primarily handles core infrastructure capabilities: ETH transfers, regulated tokenized belongings, and the basic programs supporting rollups and cross-chain bridges. The transition seems intentional.
With upgrades like Pectra already stay and PeerDAS/Fusaka coming quickly, Ethereum is “no longer scaling for smaller protocols,” the analysts write, including that the community is now aiming billions of layer-2 transactions, tokenized treasuries, and institutional settlement flows.
The evolution of Ethereum’s mainnet function has been foreseen by its builders for a while. In early 2024, Ethereum core developer Eric Conner prompt that the community’s mainnet in the long run gained’t function the platform the place each day customers would need to transact tokens.
Addressing the prevalent concern about excessive transaction charges on Ethereum, Conner identified that whereas Ethereum’s mainnet is probably not the perfect platform for each day transactions in the long run, it would nonetheless function the inspiration for decentralized functions and settlement layers.
