According to a report by Forbes, in 2024, the total market value of global crypto assets soared to a historic high of $3.8 trillion. Among them, the price of BTC reached a historical peak of $106,490.1 on December 17, 2024, with various Meme Coins taking center stage, becoming the absolute focus of the market alongside the U.S. presidential election. The Ethereum ecosystem also experienced a remarkable year, successfully completing the Dencun upgrade, while ETH achieved a market cap increase of approximately 48%.
Looking ahead to 2025, what events in the Ethereum ecosystem should users pay attention to?
Pectra Upgrade
The Ethereum Pectra upgrade is expected to be officially activated in the first quarter of 2025. The Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) to be implemented in this upgrade include:
- EIP-2537: Precompiled operations for BLS12-381 curve
- EIP-2935: Providing historical block hashes in the state
- EIP-6110: Providing validator deposits on-chain
- EIP-7002: Assets triggered by the execution layer
- EIP-7549: Removing committee index from validation signatures
- EIP-7594: PeerDAS
- EIP-7685: General execution layer requests
- EIP-7251: Increasing MAXEFFECTIVEBALANCE
- EIP-7702: Setting EOA account code for a transaction
- EIP-7623: Increasing call data fees
- Technical protocols related to EOF
As early as November 2023, developers began deploying the Ethereum Pectra upgrade. Initially, in the developers' vision, this was just a minor upgrade that could be completed alongside the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, but at that time, many technical protocols did not reach consensus, so it was not implemented.
Public information from the network shows that Gaia Regis, co-founder and chief executive of Byzantine, stated that the Pectra upgrade will fundamentally change the way the Ethereum security layer operates.
After the completion of the Pectra upgrade, developers unanimously agreed that the Verkle Transition is the next key reform area for Ethereum.
What is Verkle Transition?
The Verkle Transition is a significant reform of Ethereum's state data structure, referring to the developers' plan to shift all state data from the Merkle Patricia Tree structure to the Verkle structure. This will enable nodes to generate smaller state data proofs, thereby improving node efficiency, especially suitable for the operation of lightweight nodes, and can reduce maintenance costs.
DeFi
On December 23, 2024, Uniswap officially announced that its Layer 2 solution, Unichain, is expected to launch its public mainnet in early 2025, which may be a grand opening event for the Ethereum ecosystem's DeFi sector in 2025.
Unichain is an infrastructure focused on decentralized finance (DeFi), built on the OP Stack, and operates on Ethereum's Sepolia testnet. Since its launch in October 2024, the Sepolia testnet has processed over 50 million transactions and deployed over 4 million test contracts.
RWA
Decentralized Real World Assets (hereinafter referred to as RWA) will release liquidity, especially in the fields of real estate and carbon credits, and may see new explorations in the field of copyright works.
According to data from RWA.xyz, as of December 24, 2024, RWA has reached a total asset lock-up of approximately $14.9 billion, with over 80,000 asset holders.
Bitwise senior investment strategist Juan Leon pointed out in the latest weekly report released on December 18, 2024, that Ethereum will experience a strong rebound in 2025, with the biggest driving force coming from RWA. Relevant data shows that in the current RWA market, RWA on Ethereum accounts for 81%, dominating the market.
Stablecoin
An article published by Forbes on December 23, 2024, pointed out that Stablecoin has become one of the most successful use cases in the crypto asset field, relying on blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, and Tron to facilitate cross-chain transactions.
In 2024, the circulating supply of Stablecoins reached 200 billion, and it is expected that the circulating supply in 2025 may continue to grow, exceeding 400 billion.
NFT
On December 22, 2024, a Web3 media platform, cointribune, published an article stating that the weekly sales volume of Ethereum-based NFTs reached an astonishing $304 million, a 76% increase compared to the previous week's sales volume. The sales volume of NFTs on Ethereum accounted for 66% of the total NFT sales that week, especially as the popularity of some well-known NFT series continued to rise, such as the Azuki Element series, which saw a 226% increase in sales compared to the previous week.
As 2024 draws to a close, the sudden surge in Ethereum NFT sales seems to herald potential market vitality in 2025. Perhaps, with the joint promotion of more emerging use cases, some media have pointed out that ETH is expected to reach a new value high of $15,000 in May 2025. Let us look forward to it together!
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