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So far in 2025, over $10 billion has flowed into Ethereum-related projects, from users attracted by its proven stability and reliability. Major financial institutions such as BlackRock, Apollo Global Management, Franklin Templeton and JPMorgan have invested heavily in large-scale adoption of Ethereum-based technologies and operational processes, offering tokenized assets and settlement processes on blockchain. But the architectural developments are just one part of the story. The shift regarding trust in decentralized blockchains has broadened implications for the entire financial sector. Institutions are recognizing that programmable, transparent, ungoverned and censorship-resistant systems like Ethereum can reduce counterparty risk, enhance settlement efficiency and open access to global liquidity.
As Ethereum quietly ups its status as one of the most practical and utility-driving blockchains, we explore recent developments, the colossal shift towards decentralized tech by financial giants, and why Ethereum in 2025 is the future of finance.
Recent developments to the Ethereum blockchain
The first half of 2025 has seen some big developments to the Ethereum blockchain, which have significantly strengthened its capabilities and appeal, specifically when it comes to scalability, transparency and consensus. To begin with, the Pectra hard fork introduced key improvements such as EIP-7251, allowing validators to stake up to 2,048 ETH (up from 32 ETH). This change has made Ethereum’s consensus layer far more compatible with institutional-scale staking, offering operational efficiency and reduced overhead. Pectra also contributed to Ethereum’s move toward account abstraction, which enables smart-contract-based wallets that support gas sponsorship, batched transactions and improved user recovery.
Beyond consensus and wallet mechanics, Ethereum has continued to invest in Layer-2 scalability. Layer-2 protocols such as Arbitrum (currently processing an average of 1.5 million transactions per day), Optimism (which holds around $6 billion TVL), and zkSync have been offloading more transaction processing from the main blockchain while maintaining Ethereum’s security guarantees. What’s more, EIP-4844 (otherwise known as the “blob update”) introduced more efficient “blob” data structures, which have reduced transaction costs to almost zero and drastically helped decongest the base layer. These implementations alone have made Ethereum more suitable for high-volume use cases, including real-time payments and asset tokenization. While transparency remains a given on any blockchain, innovations to smart contracts, such as the FlexiContracts framework, have allowed contracts to evolve while preserving data and minimizing complexity.
Major financial institutions onboard blockchain
Major financial institutions such as BlackRock, JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo Global Management have onboarded blockchain into their core operations. These firms have either launched or are piloting tokenized Treasury and money-market funds on Ethereum and its Layer‑2 networks, catalyzing over $7.4 billion in assets tokenized so far in 2025. In June, JPMorgan announced that they had not only introduced its permissioned USD deposit token (JPMD) on Coinbase’s Base chain but also completed a first-of-its-kind $4 trillion tokenized Treasury settlement via Ondo Finance and Chainlink.
At the same time, Ethereum’s liquidity pool for tokenized assets has soared, with nearly $9.8 billion in tokenized collateral now residing on Ethereum, which is almost five times more than its nearest competitor. Industry leaders are calling this both a structural and philosophical shift, marking blockchain not merely as a speculative testing ground, but as operational infrastructure for mainstream finance. This transition suggests that even the world’s largest financial institutions now recognize that existing financial systems are no longer meeting the speed, transparency, and programmability demanded by global markets.
Why is Ethereum the future of finance?
Ethereum developers have steadily worked behind the scenes to create the future of finance —one of the most practical, dynamic and applicable foundational tools capable of supporting a new financial system. While other areas of tech have undergone revolutionary changes, such as the internet in the early 1990s, today’s financial infrastructure remains outdated and fails to respond to modern demand. But blockchain seems to be the catalyst for a revolution in finance. Upgrades are still complex, but in its nearly ten-year history, Ethereum has experienced over a dozen significant upgrades, implemented without any downtime or compromise to on-chain assets.
Ethereum in 2025 is not out to replace national currencies or banks. Instead, the focus is on developing interoperable financial infrastructure layers that can integrate with current systems, offering a route to reduced friction, increased accessibility, and enhanced resilience within financial frameworks. But Ethereum’s programmable capabilities can be harnessed far outside the scope of banking. For example, it’s powering decentralized applications (dApps) in areas like payroll automation, cross-border payments, insurance, and crowdfunding for platforms such as Superfluid and Sablier, enabling employees to stream their income by the second rather than waiting for monthly payroll cycles.
The range of possibilities now offered by upgrades to Ethereum in 2025, means that it affords unprecedented levels of freedom to anyone who wishes to build tools on top of Ethereum without needing to ask a central authority or integrate with dozens of outdated APIs. With traditional finance struggling with interoperability, transparency and market volatility, Ethereum has emerged as an open, global alternative that is more agile, transparent, and inclusive.
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