Compiled by: ChainCatcher
Despite recent geopolitical turmoil, Ethereum has become the market focus by bucking the trend through ETF net inflows and fund activity amid overall market pullback. Whether this is driven by leveraged funds, institutional movements, or top-level narrative changes has become the core discussion topic. As a bellwether in crypto assets, Ethereum's price fluctuations are no longer solely determined by retail sentiment, but gradually presenting a driving pattern of "top-level narrative + market synergy", sparking heated discussions among E-guards (Ethereum loyal supporters) and ecosystem participants. Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation has initiated financial policy reform and internal restructuring, signaling strategic adjustments. How this move will impact Ethereum's medium and long-term trend has become a core topic in the crypto field, also indicating that Ethereum is at a critical point of transformation, with its potential to break new highs drawing significant attention.
In this Space "Transformation: Can Ethereum with Fundamental Reversal Break New Highs?", we invited eight guests including Kiwi from OKX Ventures, Christine co-founder of Infini, famous E-guard Yinghao LIN, pepper, LEE CHAN co-founder of ChinaChic NFT, Aaron researcher from Bitget, Henry market head of Hash Epoch, and Cynic investment analyst from CGV to deeply discuss the synergistic driving forces behind Ethereum's rise, market fluctuations triggered by SharpLink's PIPE filing, and the dominant capital forces and potential breakthrough tracks in the Ethereum ecosystem, clarifying the real motivations behind on-chain trend changes and exploring early opportunities and value gaps in the new cycle.
Full version available for replay: https://x.com/i/spaces/1OdKrDRqElwJX
Question One: What are the main reasons for Ethereum's recent rise? Does it have the possibility of rebounding after the decline?
Kiwi: I think Ethereum's recent rise has several factors. First, there's indeed the ETF front-running reason, with many investors pre-positioning staking-related ETFs, which was a driving factor behind the previous main upward wave. However, these purchases mainly come from Western markets, lacking clear support, thus leading to a pullback after consuming positive sentiment.
Secondly, from the chip structure perspective, early crypto investment institutions' large-scale selling of Ethereum has reduced, indicating an optimization of chip structure. Although some bottom buyers are currently taking profits, the overall holding situation is still improving.
Regarding fundamentals, some are focusing on the Ethereum Foundation's recent actions, but I personally believe these impacts might only manifest in one or two years and lack short-term guidance significance. As for futures indicators, they are often results rather than causes, just like in previous Bitcoin main upward waves where these indicators were not necessarily effective. Therefore, I do not recommend overly relying on these data.
Cynic: I believe the core factor behind this round of Ethereum's rise is "expert self-rescue" - early investors who held Ethereum at low prices have deep faith in it, but Ethereum might face some issues during its transition to POS, ZK, and Layer2 upgrades. From market behavior, on one hand, the foundation's layoffs and accelerated project implementation release positive signals, and on the other hand, experts leverage strategies like MicroStrategy, and might even sell other assets to boost Ethereum, forming a "self-rescue" style of rise.
From trading data, the current open interest (OI) has not reached sentiment peaks, but is instead a favorable signal - with large long positions under high funding rates, indicating increased real market investment and contract trading mobilizing retail investor faith. The short-term pullback from $2,800 is due to a black swan event impact, but Ethereum's upward cycle has been opened, and such corrections are actually opportunities for those who miss the pump.
Question Two: How do you view SharpLink's stock price plummeting after submitting PIPE-related files? What insights does this event provide for future market development?
pepper: I believe the market may have over-interpreted the selling risk of PIPE registration files - after Joseph Lupin (ConsenSys CEO) became SharpLink Gaming's board chairman, the company immediately disclosed related files, and this timing coincidence easily triggers selling expectations.
Henry: Regarding SharpLink's stock price plunge, while it appears to be a small company event, I sense a deeper emotional change: traditional financial markets are becoming increasingly sensitive to on-chain data, especially contract and futures position changes on Ethereum.
This indicates a trend - on-chain information will become an important variable for off-chain assets, with policy, financial, or position dynamic disclosures being viewed as critical risk signals by the market. This is actually a key turning point for our Web3 platforms.
LEE CHAN: Regarding the pre-market stock plunge, I personally feel SharpLink is more like a counter-trend or reverse hunting strategy, essentially possibly aimed at cashing out. Its substantive impact on Ethereum is not that significant, far less impactful than MicroStrategy's ability to trigger substantial buying.
After all, "first is first", MicroStrategy as the pioneer has established market confidence, while subsequent companies are more imitators with limited influence.
Question Three: In the Ethereum ecosystem, what is the next potential breakthrough track? Which early projects are worth paying attention to?
Kiwi: I feel that since Devcon last year, Ethereum's innovation has actually stagnated. After reStaking, no particularly outstanding new breakthrough has emerged. Although many optimizable concepts have been proposed recently, with directional progress, these were actually discussed before, and truly implementable changes are not yet visible.
As for market highlights, Arbitrum's recent Timeboost income performance is quite good and can be considered a rare bright spot. But overall, these are insufficient to support a major market trend.
So in the short term, I believe Ethereum's technical side remains relatively flat, and a real breakthrough will still depend on new trends, such as RWA (Real World Assets), which would indeed provide significant help to Ethereum.
Henry: In my view, there are three potential breakthrough directions in the Ethereum ecosystem: first, protocols with autonomous on-chain earning capabilities; second, decision-making infrastructure; third, the service layer combining AI with smart contracts that I'm currently researching. These three directions share two commonalities: they are built on Ethereum's "second curve" and possess verifiable on-chain income, which is particularly friendly to the current high-interest environment and has monetization potential.
For instance, our platform Hash Epoch is connecting Web3 communities with content producers, allowing influential creators and KOLs to initiate topic predictions and share revenues with users, truly realizing "opinion as value, content as asset".
Question Four: In the Ethereum ecosystem, are people more interested in token price fluctuations or in future Ethereum ecosystem development?
Aaron: Combining the previous question, there are three key macro trends in the crypto market worth noting: first, the GENIUS Act will be voted on in the House on the 18th, clearing obstacles for stablecoin compliance and attracting institutional funds; second, the Treasury Secretary predicts stablecoin market value will grow from the current $240 billion to $2 trillion by 2028, with RWA on-chain being the core engine for this growth, and traditional assets like stocks, oil, and gold going on-chain will bring massive incremental funds to the crypto market; third, although Solana is hot due to its MEME ecosystem, Ethereum is more likely to become the primary platform for traditional institutions to deploy RWA due to its infrastructure advantages, such as Uniswap's UniChain potentially becoming the largest on-chain broker, and AAVE possibly evolving into the central bank of the Web3 domain, establishing the industry's basic interest rate system.
From a long-term perspective, these deployments will continue to consolidate Ethereum's fundamentals, and its forward-looking exploration in the RWA track may become a crucial growth pole driving its development in the next four years.
pepper: I believe the key to Ethereum's current restart lies in the RWA trend, essentially solving fund retention through "eight-character logic" - "cutting the head" through mechanisms like Staking and LST to achieve forced locking, "cutting the tail" through delayed satisfaction and penalty mechanisms to constrain liquidity, and "middle flow" relying on compound reward designs for capital retention.
Past DeFi nested models became ineffective, causing the underlying logic of the Ethereum ecosystem to lose support; split disk models also fell into困境 due to lacking sustainable blood-generating mechanisms. The rise of RWA provides an alternative path - by mapping traditional assets like US stocks and real estate on-chain, leveraging Ethereum's decentralized characteristics to become a capital cross-border flow channel. Especially for wealthy individuals in underdeveloped countries, this method is equivalent to bypassing the traditional financial system, converting assets to dollars, thereby allowing the crypto industry to return to Bitcoin's early anonymous payment and hedging logic on the "Silk Road".
Cynic: I believe the core of the SharpLink event is that the market doesn't buy its narrative. During good market conditions, even with cash-out operations, market reactions would be more tolerant; but now with overall weakness, the Altcoin sector is on edge, and any slight movement can easily trigger panic selling. This is the current dilemma of Altcoins. In contrast, Bitcoin has "uniqueness", and people are willing to treat it as a hedging asset. But Ethereum? I think the market confidence gap between it and other Altcoins is not as large as imagined.
Of course, Ethereum's biggest advantage currently remains DeFi and TVL, with no true competitors among public chains. But the issue is - if traditional finance truly wants to do RWA or on-chain finance, it may not directly access Ethereum, possibly choosing to create its own chain, which might not be a long-term positive for Ethereum.
However, at the current stage, Ethereum remains the biggest beneficiary of stablecoin and RWA narratives. If looking at Altcoin directions, it is still the most noteworthy main line target.
