Ethereum published a lengthy post on X detailing its 2025 high point. This year, the company’s DeFi TVL reportedly grew nine times as much as competing networks in terms of DeFi.
According to Ethereum, 2025 marks the year Ethereum transitions from an emerging technology to a fundamental “scaffolding” of digital civilization, with its growth defined by technological maturity, institutional consolidation, and global expansion.
Ethereum has matured as a global payment institution
While other L1s were optimized for high-speed and retail transactions and competed for users, Ethereum focused on solidifying its position as a secure foundation for a growing digital civilization and subsequently took over the capital.
Despite high-speed trading and retail apps that have appeared on networks such as Solana and BNB, their TVL lags significantly compared to Ethereum.
With a total TVL of more than $99 billion, more than nine times larger than its closest rival, Ethereum has grown from a network to a global financial clearing house.
Securing this lead means the network can boast one of the richest order books coupled with a robust lending pool in the digital world of decentralized finance. These deep liquidity statistics are not noticed by financial institutions or whales.
A strong order book means the chain can absorb huge trades without causing large price slides that often harm traders. This makes it a suitable investment destination for institutional investors who prefer deep liquidity. That capital deepens the pool and eventually attracts even bigger players.
According to an Ethereum post, this unfolded beautifully in 2025, with the chain accounting for approximately 68% of the entire DeFi market. This screams confidence, and as the cryptocurrency industry continues to grow, this commodity is hard to come by and even harder to maintain.
More milestones define 2025 for Ethereum
The year also validated Ethereum’s hub-and-spoke model, directly disproving the historical myth that its L2 was a vampire that fragmented liquidity and thus weakened the chain.
In 2025, the chain outsourced high-frequency retail activities to L2s such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base, freeing them to act as payment supervisors. Users can enjoy lower fees on L2 without compromising the Ethereum ecosystem.
Outsourcing increased traffic in L2, but transaction security and finality remained in Ethereum L1, continuing to ensure its dominance in TVL.
There was also an upgrade to Pectra that made smart wallets the global standard. Next in the technology pipeline is a Fusaka upgrade that brings prices even lower. Both upgrades ensured that Ethereum remains the world leader for a long time, as it has become the storehouse of the world’s wealth.
Additionally, in 2025, project growth and L2 development made privacy a central focus of the ecosystem. According to XPost, Ethereum’s privacy protocol has hit a new all-time high in locked value, increasing by more than 60% in 2025.
By the end of 2025, the Web3 privacy ecosystem had more than 750 projects, including initiatives impacting DeFi, wallets, apps, storage, and more.
The chain will celebrate 10 years of operation in July 2025, with celebrations held around the world and a renewed focus on growth and resilience.
As reported by Cryptopolitan, in its 10 years of operation, Ethereum has deployed over 88 million smart contracts in total, and daily on-chain transactions reached a record high of 2.23 million as of December 2025. It also boasts the largest developer community in blockchain, with 32,000 active developers driving innovation in the ecosystem.
“Ethereum’s 10 years of uninterrupted operation represents trust earned over time. Ethereum is an infrastructure that endures through market cycles and global stress, setting the standard for resilience,” the post concludes.
