Gate today's market focus: Ethereum ETF raised a record high in July, Solana DEX trading volume has dropped nearly 70% from the year-to-date peak.

Bitcoin (BTC) has rebounded from its intraday low, currently reported at around $118,360 during the Asian session today (31st), with Ethereum (ETH) and blue-chip altcoins also following suit. As the Federal Reserve (FED) announced a decision to keep interest rates unchanged, the market's focus has shifted back to the crypto world, including the Ethereum ETF which set a record high for capital inflow in July, and Solana DEX trading volume which has dropped nearly 70% from its peak earlier this year.

(Source: Gate)

Ethereum ETF attracts record investment in July, The Ether Machine increases on-chain support in response to institutional influx

The Ether Machine, a strategy company for Ethereum treasury, has recently increased its holdings by approximately 15,000 Ether, raising its total holdings to 334,757 coins, placing it among the top Ethereum treasuries on-chain. Based on current prices, this additional purchase is valued at about 50 million USD, and it still retains up to 407 million USD in available funds, demonstrating its long-term capital allocation capability and highlighting its strong confidence in the medium to long-term performance of Ethereum.

This increase in positions is not an isolated event but rather echoes the current trend of institutions continuously accumulating Ether. Since the official launch of the spot Ether ETF in 2024, several traditional asset management firms (such as BlackRock and Fidelity) have been continuously expanding their allocations. In July 2025, the net inflow into ETFs reached a historic high, with monthly inflows totaling 5.4 billion USD, surpassing the total of the previous 11 months, highlighting the rapid consensus among institutions regarding Ether as a "blue-chip digital asset."

Overall, the continuous accumulation behavior of The Ether Machine not only reflects its firm belief in the fundamentals of Ethereum, but also directly responds to the major trend of "institutional capital accelerating the layout of Ethereum" on-chain. At a time when ETFs are driving the transformation of Ethereum's asset attributes, such financial treasury behavior is becoming an important signal for the market to judge the direction of long-term capital flow.

Sui TVL reaches a historic high of 2.2 billion USD, doubling growth within the year highlights the accelerated expansion of the ecosystem

According to DefiLlama data, the total value locked (TVL) on the Sui chain has surpassed $2.2 billion, increasing nearly 100% from the low point earlier this year, setting a new historical high. This surge began on May 22 after the largest DEX aggregator, Cetus, encountered a contract vulnerability attack, entering an ecological recovery phase. The incident caused a loss of over $223 million in liquidity pools, but the team quickly paused the protocol and initiated asset recovery and governance reforms. Ultimately, through community voting, most of the assets were recovered, and the protocol shifted towards open-source governance, restoring ecological transparency and market confidence.

The on-chain fundamentals are synchronously improving. According to Artemis data, the daily active addresses of Sui quickly rebounded from a post-event low of about 300,000 to 2.6 million, growing over 130% within the month, reflecting real capital inflow and user return. At the same time, SUI has begun to attract attention from U.S. publicly listed companies. Nasdaq-listed Lion Group first purchased 350,000 SUI in June and increased its holdings to over 1.01 million in July, with a market value of $4.3 million; Everything Blockchain Inc. also announced the inclusion of SUI in its $10 million crypto asset portfolio.

Overall, the recent rise of SUI is not driven by short-term speculation, but rather propelled by multiple factors such as improvements in protocol governance, a recovery in on-chain data, and the entry of institutional funds, demonstrating its strong recovery capability and long-term growth potential.

Solana DEX Trading Volume has dropped nearly 70% from its peak at the beginning of the year, with a temporary cooling of ecosystem heat.

According to DefiLlama data, the monthly Trading Volume of Solana DEX peaked in January 2025, exceeding $260 billion, but has since continued to decline, dropping nearly 70% from the peak as of July. This round of adjustment is mainly due to the retreat of meme coins and speculative frenzy that drove high-frequency trading on the Solana chain at the beginning of the year, leading to a significant decrease in short-term capital and high-frequency robot activity in the market. In addition, cross-chain funds have begun to flow back into the Ethereum ecosystem, influenced by the continuous capital inflow of the Ethereum spot ETF, with hotspots like Layer and restaking protocols siphoning off a large amount of Trading Volume, resulting in a phase cooling of DEX activity on Solana.

Nevertheless, the infrastructure and protocol innovations of the Solana ecosystem remain resilient. Leading DEXs such as Raydium and Jupiter continue to maintain a high market share, and the demand for applications related to on-chain staking, MEV profits, and LST-type products is steadily increasing. The current decline in trading volume is more a result of periodic changes in market sentiment rather than a deterioration of the ecosystem's fundamentals. If new token issuances, DeFi innovations, and ecosystem incentives are restarted in the future, Solana's on-chain liquidity is expected to become active again, and DEX trading volume may regain its upward momentum.