On July 30, 2025, Ethereum celebrated ten years since its genesis block: a decade of operating "essentially flawlessly," as Ethereum co-founder and Consensys CEO Joe Lubin described it. Ten years of continuous uptime, zero pauses, zero maintenance windows, and sixteen protocol upgrades have proven Ethereum is ready to be the backbone of the global financial system.

And increasingly, Wall Street agrees.

Led by Joe Lubin and Sharplink, the Digital Asset Treasury strategy drove ETH out of the doldrums and toward new all-time highs earlier this year. Over 200 companies followed, building on momentum started a year earlier with the introduction of Ethereum ETFs. Corporate treasuries and ETFs together held over 10 million ETH worth $46.22 billion by August.

Underneath those big numbers are pension funds, asset managers, and sovereign wealth funds deploying capital into programmable, open and decentralized finance.

The Year of the Fox

Main Street followed Wall Street’s lead into defi this year. Over a quarter of American adults, and surging global youth, now own crypto, with usage branching far beyond the tech-savvy and financial elite. In many other corners of the globe adoption is even steeper, like in Nigeria where 42 percent engage with crypto or the 69 percent year-over-year growth seen in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Emblematic of this movement is the ongoing deployment and adoption of the MetaMask Card, a collaboration between MetaMask and Mastercard that allowed direct spending from self-custody crypto wallets. This non-custodial model enabled seamless, instant transactions from a MetaMask wallet, removing the need for pre-loading or conversion. Operating on the Linea network and secured by Ethereum, the card brought DeFi into daily life and made headlines.

The card was just one of several success stories from 2025’s year of the Fox. 

MetaMask has evolved from a single-network Ethereum wallet into the most connected self-custodial crypto app in web3. The addition of Solana, Bitcoin, Monad, and Sei support transform it into a true multichain hub. Perpetual futures—aka perps—made sophisticated trading accessible to everyone. Prediction markets followed, enabling users to trade on real-world events directly in-app. Finally, MetaMask Rewards turned onchain activity into tangible benefits, and the stablecoin mUSD launched as a composable foundation, backing Card balances and earning Reward payouts while serving as connective tissue across the MetaMask ecosystem.

Read more about MetaMask in 2025.

From scaling to serious capital 

Ethereum's energy consumption, post-Merge, remained at just 0.01 TWh per year—down 99.95% from its peak—aligning with global sustainability goals and enabling enterprise adoption. Daily transaction volumes surged to 1.74 million in August 2025, with Layer 2 networks handling the majority of activity.

Over 35.7 million ETH (29.8% of total supply) was staked, reinforcing network security and offering institutions 3-4% annual yields. Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem supported $166 billion in total value locked (TVL) and $45 billion in Layer 2 TVL, with protocols like Uniswap and Aave driving growth.

Linea's technical achievements in 2025 demonstrated that Ethereum Layer 2s could match and exceed the performance of standalone Layer 1 chains without sacrificing security or decentralization. Linea's zkEVM integrated six Ethereum upgrades: Paris, Shanghai, Cancun, Prague, Pectra, and Fusaka, all in less than a single calendar year, achieving real-time parity with Mainnet. This was speed-running progress that many thought impossible for a zero-knowledge rollup.

The LINEA token generation event (TGE) in September 2025 rewarded 750,000 wallets, with over 92% of eligible users claiming the airdrop. With 85% of the total supply dedicated to ecosystem growth, public goods, and R&D—and zero team or investor allocations—LINEA's tokenomics mirrored Ethereum's ethos and set a new standard for fair launches. LINEA went live on over 22 centralized exchanges (CEXs) on day one.

Now Linea is positioned to be the institutional on-ramp to crypto for 2026, with a $200 million commitment from SharpLink for deployment, integrations for cross-border settlement, and a dual ETH/LINEA burn mechanism demonstrating that sustainable, non-extractive tokenomics can attract serious capital.

Get the full run-down from Linea in 2025.

Looking ahead

2025 has seen unprecedented levels of adoption at the institutional level, with the beginnings of the next mainstream moment peeking above the horizon. 2026 is only going to be bigger, as more and different kinds of organizations continue to develop on Ethereum, and we see greater strides towards true widespread public participation in decentralized financial technology. 

In the coming year Linea will focus on becoming a self-sustaining chain with the launch of Linea Yield Boost (formerly Native Yield), delivering the best risk-adjusted returns on ETH capital. MetaMask will expand into more onchain assets and empower even broader uses.

The past decade proved Ethereum works. The next decade will prove it can change the world.