We are experiencing an arms race in the Ethereum treasury.

A silent battle for assets without gunpowder has quietly begun, and global listed companies are hoarding Ethereum at an unprecedented speed.

In July 2025, an investment announcement by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel shocked the crypto market—he holds a 9.1% stake in the mining company BitMine through his entity, which has transitioned to an Ethereum financial strategy, holding 300,700 ETH, becoming the world's largest ETH reserve publicly listed company.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Driven by companies like SharpLink Gaming and Bit Digita, over 85 publicly listed companies have incorporated Ethereum into their balance sheets, collectively holding about 1.6 million ETH, which accounts for 1.9% of the total circulating supply.

I. Evolution of Positioning: From "World Computer" to "World Ledger"

The ten-year development history of Ethereum is a history of continuous self-innovation and evolution. Founder Vitalik Buterin recently redefined its positioning: "Ethereum Layer 1 is the world ledger," a statement that marks the shift of its strategic focus from a universal computing platform to financial infrastructure.

The early Ethereum aimed to build a "world computer" as its vision, hoping to become an open platform for running various smart contracts. However, real challenges followed one after another: high Gas fees and limited TPS performance made it difficult for complex computing applications to be deployed on a large scale.

"The main goal of Ethereum in the first ten years is to perfect Ethereum technology," said co-founder Vitalik Buterin at the 2024 Blockchain Global Summit. During these ten years, Ethereum has undergone a transformation from proof of concept to production engine.

The turning point came in 2020 with the maturity of Rollup technology. This drove Ethereum to form a "L1+L2" layered architecture: the mainnet focuses on security and final settlement, while Layer 2 networks handle high-frequency trading. This division of labor has naturally evolved the Ethereum mainnet into a global decentralized ledger.

The implementation of EIP-1559 is a key mechanism for value capture. By introducing a Base Fee and a burning mechanism, each transaction on L2 that returns to the mainnet for verification will destroy ETH, effectively paying for ledger security. When the network is active, ETH even exhibits deflationary properties, reshaping its value support logic.

2. Technical Roadmap: Five Major Upgrades to Build the Foundation for the Future

The technology upgrade roadmap is clear: from the Homestead in 2016 to the London upgrade in 2021, each hard fork has propelled the network forward. The "Merge" in September 2022 became a milestone event, as Ethereum transitioned from the PoW consensus mechanism to PoS, laying the foundation for future development.

In 2024, the Ethereum trading experience will undergo a qualitative change. Vitalik revealed in a speech: "Transaction fees will drop from $5-10 in 2021 to $0.01, and transaction confirmation times will shrink from minutes to seconds." These improvements will enable Ethereum to truly serve the general user base.

Currently, the Ethereum staking ecosystem is flourishing. Data shows that the total staking amount on the network has surpassed 35 million ETH, accounting for over 29% of the circulating supply, with an annual release value exceeding 1 billion USD. This staking economy has become a significant attraction for enterprises to allocate ETH.

The future technology roadmap is even more exciting, with the Prague Upgrade in 2025 introducing the Proof of Stake Plus consensus mechanism and dynamic sharding technology.

The technology roadmap for Ethereum over the next two years is laying a solid foundation for its role as a "world ledger," with five major technical directions including:

1. zkEVM Layer 1 Integration (2025 Q4 - 2026 Q2): Zero-knowledge proof verification costs reduced by 80%, 99% of blocks verified within 10 seconds. This will attract stablecoins like USDC and USDT to expand their market share on the main chain, directly promoting ETH deflation.

2. RISC-V Execution New Architecture (Launch in the second half of 2025): Using an open-source instruction set to replace the traditional EVM, the execution efficiency of smart contracts will be improved by 3-5 times, and Gas costs will be reduced by 50-70%. This will activate new application scenarios such as high-frequency trading and real-time gaming.

3. L1-L2 Ecological Coordination (Launch in Q4 2025): The goal is to unify the liquidity pool TVL to exceed $200 billion (currently about $120 billion), reduce cross-layer transaction costs by 90%, and achieve cross-layer confirmation within 10 seconds. DeFi protocols will aggregate liquidity from the entire ecosystem, realizing a leap in capital efficiency.

4. Validator economic optimization (starting in the second half of 2025): The staking threshold will gradually decrease from 32 Ether to 1 Ether, with the annual yield increasing to 6-8%. This will drive the ETH staking rate from 25% to over 40%, with approximately 48 million Ether locked.

5. Sharding Technology Reversion (ETH 3.0, post-2026): Combining zkEVM with sharding to achieve millions of TPS, while reducing data availability costs by 99%. This paves the way for large-scale Web3 applications in the next decade.

By 2030, the Ethereum tech stack will be fully upgraded, with the execution layer introducing the RISC-V virtual machine, improving efficiency by 50 to 100 times; the settlement layer will achieve native Rollup through the EXECUTE precompiled function, allowing L1 to directly verify L2 execution.

3. Corporate Armament Race: Restructuring the Capital Landscape

The wave of companies incorporating Ethereum into their balance sheets is reshaping the capital landscape, and the core driving factors behind this trend are clearly visible:

1. Staking returns: An annualized return of 3-5% allows companies to generate returns on idle funds.

2. Ecological Participation: Deeply engaging in DeFi, tokenization, and other innovative fields through Ether.

3. Asset Deflation: The supply contraction under the EIP-1559 mechanism brings expectations of value appreciation.

4. Market Confidence: Conveying an image of embracing technological innovation to investors.

The 2025 Enterprise ETH Holdings Ranking Reveals a New Landscape:

1. Bitmine Immersion (Stock Code: BMNR)

ETH holdings: 300,700 coins

Latest news: A substantial increase in holdings through private placement financing of $250 million (approximately 81,380 ETH), making it the top holder. The company focuses on blockchain infrastructure (such as mining operations and hardware sales) but has not yet disclosed its ETH staking plans.

Strategy Features: Pure equity financing, avoiding debt risk, but significant equity dilution (equity expanded 13 times)

2. SharpLink Gaming (Ticker: SBET)

ETH Holdings: 280,600 units

Latest update: A total of over 215,000 ETH has been purchased through a combination of Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE) and At-The-Market (ATM) offerings. All holdings are staked with an annual yield of approximately 5.3%, and a total of 322 ETH staking rewards have been obtained.

Strategy Features: 100% Staked ETH, directly enhancing Ethereum network security and yield, financing method leading to short-term equity dilution pressure.

3. Bit Digital (stock code: BTBT)

ETH holdings: 100,600 coins

Latest update: Raised $172 million through a public offering and sold 280 Bitcoins, converting all funds into Ether. Previously staked 21,568 Ether (annual yield 3.2%), and may expand the staking scale after the transformation.

Strategy Features: Actively liquidate BTC to invest in ETH, highlighting confidence in Ethereum's earning potential, with relatively high transparency in equity financing.

The total amount of ETH held by institutions has exceeded 1.6 million coins, valued at over $5 billion, which accounts for 35% of the total scale of Ethereum ETFs. DForce founder Yang Mindao predicts: "The amount of Ethereum held by listed companies may reach 10% of the total coin supply (close to a staking ratio of 30%), which will be the biggest change in Ethereum's capital and governance structure."

Wall Street gives ETH reserve companies a significant premium, with data showing that GameSquare's market value has a premium of up to 13.8 times its ETH reserve book value; BitMine has a premium of about 5 times after completing its latest financing, which reflects the market's recognition of Ethereum's strategic value.

4. Market Impact: Supply and Demand Restructuring and Value Reassessment

The corporate reserve competition is profoundly changing the market structure of ETH. On the supply side, multiple deflationary mechanisms are forming a closed loop:

1. Staking Lock-up: A staking rate of 40% means that 48 million Ether will exit circulation.

2.Gas Burning: L2 prosperity brings a continuous burning effect

3. Institutional hoarding: Corporate treasury continues to absorb market liquidity.

On the demand side, the spot ETF provides a traditional funding channel. Since its launch in July 2024, the Ethereum ETF has accumulated a net inflow of $5.76 billion, accounting for 3.87% of the total market capitalization of ETH. Bitwise's Chief Investment Officer predicts: "The inflow of funds into the Ethereum ETF may significantly accelerate in the second half of 2025."

Market reactions are showing signs, with the surge in corporate reserves driving ETH to a 22.29% increase over the past two months, significantly outperforming Bitcoin's 7.9% during the same period. ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood has publicly stated that the long-term value of Ethereum is severely underestimated, while Varys venture capital director even made a bet with Multicoin co-founder on whether ETH can reach $10,000 by the end of 2026.

Although the Ethereum enterprise reserve craze is in full swing, deeper risks have begun to emerge.

Yield Cost Inversion - SharpLink's staking yield (4.1%) and financing cost (14.8%) result in a 10.7% real capital loss. If this inversion persists, it will severely erode the company's value.

Liquidity risk accumulation - The average daily trading ratio of ETH reserves exceeds 18% for four companies, and a 5% sell-off could lead to a price collapse of 23%. When the market turns, these companies may fall into a "sell ETH → price drop → further sell-off" death spiral.

The regulatory sword hangs high—The SEC's regulatory draft requires hourly impairment testing and a provision of 30% for risk reserves. This stringent regulation may force companies to adjust their reserve strategies and even trigger short-term sell-offs.

Speculation overheating signal - BitMine options implied volatility reached 400%, with a short ratio of 28%. The market has shown typical signs of speculation overheating. When the frenzy subsides, companies lacking fundamental support will face value regression.

Governance power game concerns - institutions hold over 1.6 million ETH, accounting for 35% of the total scale of spot ETFs. If positions continue to expand, the governance discourse power of the developer community may be diluted, undermining the decentralized foundation of Ethereum.

5. Future Outlook: Dual-Track Parallel and Value Leap

Looking ahead to 2030, the Ethereum ecosystem will present a dual-track parallel pattern:

1. Aligned Rollup: Deeply integrates Ethereum security (e.g., Taiko), becoming the preferred choice for high-value DeFi and institutional assets.

2. Performance Rollup: Focuses on throughput optimization (e.g., MegaETH), serving popular scenarios such as gaming and social.

Intermediate Rollups will face elimination, as network effects will drive the market to concentrate around fewer, larger hubs, forming two camps of "performance maximization" and "security maximization." Users will naturally layer their choices between high-risk and mass application scenarios.

The technological upgrades and capital inflow create a positive cycle. Analysts predict that the price range for ETH in 2025 will be:

• Conservative prediction: 6000-8000 USD

• Optimistic forecast: 10,000-15,000 USD

By 2029-2030, if Ethereum successfully establishes its position as a global settlement layer, the price could reach 30,000 USD. The realization of this goal depends on the implementation of the technical roadmap, deepening institutional adoption, and the coordinated evolution of the regulatory environment.

Multiple engines are driving the reevaluation of Ethereum's value:

Ethereum ETF saw a weekly net inflow of over $900 million, setting a historical record, and BlackRock's ETHA holdings exceeded 2 million ETH; on the technical front, the ETH/BTC exchange rate has risen over 50% in nearly four months, with technical analysis indicating a next target of $4,000; in terms of regulatory environment, the SEC's recognition of ETH's securities attributes is becoming clearer.

Standard Chartered Bank is bullish on ETH reaching $14,000, while independent analysts have set a target price of $15,000. However, the true digital oil era requires more solid milestones.

When asked about the future value of Ethereum, Vitalik once pointed out meaningfully: "If decentralization only remains at the level of slogans, Ethereum will face a survival crisis." This statement reveals the true threshold of Ethereum—only by maintaining a balance between technological advancement and decentralization can long-term value be sustained.

Goldman Sachs has begun designing ABS securitization products for staking yield rights, and Deribit has launched custom ETH options for enterprises. The combination of these traditional financial instruments with crypto assets signifies that Ethereum is becoming a mainstream financial infrastructure.

"The day Amazon or sovereign funds incorporate ETH into their strategic reserves will be the true milestone of the digital oil era's arrival." This self-rescue movement initiated by financially troubled companies has brutally validated the irreversible trend of on-chain assets reconstructing corporate balance sheets.

The eyes of the crypto industry are focused on the financial reports of companies like SharpLink Gaming and BitMine—these companies hold reserves of over 200,000 Ether, becoming the new power hub of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Traditional capital and the native forces of blockchain are vying on Ethereum. Wall Street giants like Peter Thiel are positioning themselves on Ethereum through BitMine, while the Ethereum Foundation is lowering the validator threshold to 1ETH to uphold the ideals of decentralization.

As over $4.6 billion in real-world assets are tokenized on Ethereum, capturing 90% of the blockchain RWA market, the global financial system has quietly migrated to this "world ledger." The future of Ethereum is being rewritten by the ETH that is continuously accumulated in institutional treasuries.