According to Forbes, in 2024, the total market capitalization of global crypto assets soared to a historic high of $3.8 trillion. Among them, BTC reached a historical peak of $106,490.1 on December 17, 2024, while various Meme Coins took center stage, becoming the absolute focus of the market alongside the U.S. presidential election, and the Ethereum ecosystem also experienced a spectacular year, successfully completing the Dencun upgrade, while ETH achieved a market cap increase of approximately 48%.
Looking ahead to 2025, what events in the Ethereum ecosystem are worth users' attention?
Pectra upgrade
The Ethereum Pectra upgrade is expected to be officially activated in the first quarter of 2025, and the Ethereum Improvement Proposals to be implemented in this round of upgrades include:


EIP-2537: Precompiled operations for BLS12-381 curve


EIP-2935: Providing historical block hashes in the state


EIP-6110: Providing validator deposits on-chain


EIP-7002: Assets triggered by the execution layer


EIP-7549: Removing committee index from validator signatures


EIP-7594: PeerDAS


EIP-7685: General execution layer requests


EIP-7251: Increase MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE


EIP-7702: Set EOA account code for a transaction


EIP-7623: Increase call data fees


Technical protocols related to EOF


As early as November 2023, developers had begun deploying the Ethereum Pectra upgrade. Initially, in the developers' vision, this was just a small upgrade that could be completed alongside the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, but at that time, many technical protocols had not reached a consensus and thus were not implemented.
Public information from the network shows that Gaia Regis, co-founder and CEO of Byzantine, stated that the Pectra upgrade will fundamentally change the way the Ethereum security layer operates.
Once the Pectra upgrade is completed, developers have reached a consensus that the Verkle Transition is the next key reform area for Ethereum.
What is the Verkle Transition?
The Verkle Transition is a major reform of the Ethereum state data structure, referring to the developers' plan to transition all state data from the Merkle Patricia Tree structure to the Verkle structure, which will enable nodes to generate smaller state data proofs, thereby improving node efficiency, especially for lightweight node operations, reducing maintenance costs.
DeFi
On December 23, 2024, Uniswap officially announced that its Layer2 solution Unichain is expected to launch on the public mainnet in early 2025, which may be a grand event for the Ethereum ecosystem's DeFi sector in 2025.
Unichain focuses on decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure, built on the OP Stack and running on Ethereum's Sepolia testnet. Since its launch in October 2024, the Sepolia testnet has processed over 50 million transactions and deployed over 4 million test contracts.
RWA
Decentralized real-world assets (hereafter referred to as RWA) will unlock liquidity, especially in real estate and carbon credit applications, and may see new explorations in the field of copyright works.
According to data from RWA.xyz, as of December 24, 2024, RWA has reached approximately $14.9 billion in total assets locked, with over 80,000 asset holders.
Juan Leon, Senior Investment Strategist at Bitwise, pointed out in the latest weekly report released on December 18, 2024, that Ethereum is expected to experience a strong rebound in 2025, with the biggest driving force coming from RWA. Relevant data shows that RWA on Ethereum accounts for 81% of the current RWA market, dominating the space.
Stablecoin
An article published by Forbes on December 23, 2024, noted that Stablecoins have become one of the most successful use cases in the crypto asset space, relying on blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, and Tron to facilitate cross-chain transactions.
In 2024, the circulating supply of Stablecoins reached 200 billion, and the circulating supply in 2025 is expected to continue to grow, surpassing 400 billion.
NFT
On December 22, 2024, an article published by the Web3 media platform cointribune stated that the weekly sales volume of Ethereum-based NFTs reached an astonishing $304 million, a 76% increase compared to the previous week's sales, with NFT sales on Ethereum accounting for 66% of the total NFT sales that week, particularly as some well-known NFT series gained popularity, such as the Azuki element series NFTs, which saw a 226% increase in sales compared to the previous week.
As 2024 draws to a close, the sudden surge in Ethereum NFT sales seems to signal potential market vitality in 2025. Perhaps, with the support of more emerging use cases, some media pointed out that ETH is expected to reach a new high of $15,000 in value by May 2025, and we look forward to this together!

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