Artificial intelligence agents, a series of major network upgrades, and regulatory improvements in the United States are all things Ethereum supporters should look forward to in 2025, analysts and experts say.
Article written by: Tom Mitchelhill
Source: Cointelegraph
Article translation: Ada, MetaEra
Ethereum supporters say the adoption of artificial intelligence agents, major network upgrades, increased institutional interest, and a slew of regulatory changes from the crypto-friendly administration of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump are among the things to look forward to in 2025.
Infinex founder Kain Warwick said in an interview with Cointelegraph that while Ethereum may have experienced relatively minor underperformance in 2024, the asset is like a "spring ready to go" and is ready for an explosion in 2025. Prepared.
Ethereum has gained 53.5% this year, from $2,350 on January 1 to $3,478 at press time, according to TradingView.
Meanwhile, other major crypto assets, including Solana, Ada, and XRP, are up 92.7%, 57%, and 276.5%, respectively, from the beginning of the year.
“The longer you hold it down, the harder it’s going to bounce. There are a lot of factors pushing it forward right now — and there are some factors holding it back — but when it does explode, people are going to say ‘Oh my god,’ ” Warwick said.
He mentioned several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and the resulting improvements in user experience, and believed that these are key turning points in the future price trends of Ethereum and ETH.
Ethereum to get Pectra upgrade in 2025
One of the major upgrades that Warwick and other ethereum supporters are eagerly awaiting is the Pectra upgrade — the next major milestone on ethereum’s development roadmap, currently scheduled for launch in early 2025.
Gaia Regis, co-founder and CEO of restaking platform Byzantine, said the Pectra upgrade will fundamentally change the way Ethereum’s security layer works.
“Currently, Ethereum staking is driven primarily by liquidity. In fact, a lot of ETH holders want to stake. This is generally a good thing because more nodes mean higher decentralization and stronger security,” she said.
However, Regis said Ethereum has now reached a massive scale — with more than 1 million Ethereum validators communicating with each other — which is starting to slow the network down.
“Pectra solves this problem by increasing the maximum valid validator balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, which significantly reduces the number of validators required and thus significantly reduces the load on the network,” Regis said.
In September this year, Ethereum core developers decided to divide the Pectra upgrade into two major parts. The first Pectra package will introduce a total of eight EIPs, the most notable of which is EIP-7702, which aims to improve the user experience of wallets and chains.
“This will make staking cheaper, attracting more people to participate in staking, and will reduce staking rewards over time. Because of this, we are very bullish on re-staking. Many people will want to increase their staking returns by securing other networks.”
Trump’s Crypto-Friendly SEC Would Be Particularly Beneficial to ETH
Saul Rejwan, managing partner at crypto venture capital firm Masterkey, told Cointelegraph that Ethereum and more ‘legitimate’ projects in the crypto industry, particularly decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN), will benefit the most from the Trump administration and the crypto-friendly SEC.
On December 4, Trump nominated pro-cryptocurrency entrepreneur and former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins as the next SEC Chairman. Current Chairman Gary Gensler will resign from the position on January 20.
“DeFi projects on Ethereum will thrive in a more favorable regulatory environment, and areas like restaking just need a little regulatory push to attract institutional investors,” he said.
“We expect this new leadership will lower barriers to entry, making it easier for early-stage crypto entrepreneurs and resilient businesses to innovate and thrive,” Rejwan said.
Stablecoins, Tokenization, and AI Agents
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said Ethereum has three major advantages as it enters 2025 and expects the asset to see explosive growth in the new year.
“Ethereum is at the center of three major trends that will impact cryptocurrency in 2025: stablecoins, tokenization, and the rise of AI agents. It dominates all three,” Houghan said.
“I think the heat from these three sectors next year will benefit ETH, making it the ‘rebound star’ in 2025. You can already see this trend from its recent strong performance and ETF inflows,” he added.
Ethereum ETFs have generated $1.5 billion in net inflows over the past two weeks, one of the biggest periods ever for the eight spot funds, according to Farside Investors.
Like Rejwan, Houghan believes that a crypto-friendly SEC under Trump would be particularly beneficial to Ethereum.
“I fully expect the regulatory sword of Damocles that has hung over the U.S. crypto industry for the past four years to be lifted. Washington’s new approach will attract thousands of entrepreneurs to the crypto space, many of whom will build killer apps on Ethereum and its layer-2 networks,” Houghan said.
Overall, Houghan said Bitwise expects ETH to surpass its previous all-time high of $4,878, reaching what he called a “conservative” forecast of new highs of $7,000.
More Layer 2s, re-staking, and better DApps
Edu Timmers, an Ethereum advocate and chief marketing officer at crypto firm Keyrock, said he looks forward to the upcoming releases of new Layer 2 networks, including Abstract and Deutsche Bank’s projects, which will increase the overall utility of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Timmers also pointed to the recent rise of Hyperliquid, an on-chain perpetual swap protocol built on Arbitrum, as evidence of Ethereum’s growing on-chain dominance. He said he expects Ethereum and its ecosystem of decentralized applications (DApps) to begin to properly compete with centralized market leaders such as Binance in the new year.
“By 2025, projects like Hyperliquid will start competing with centralized players like Binance instead of decentralized players like Uniswap,” Timmers said.
In addition, Timmers also said that Ethereum's re-staking is another underestimated and exciting area in 2025. He believes that re-staking will make the network more robust and versatile.
“As chains begin to offload security to Ethereum mainnet through solutions like EigenLayer, re-staking could see a breakthrough.
