ConsenSys has shared an update that reflects on the steady progress made this year as far as Ethereum development and crypto adoption are concerned. ConsenSys noted that on July 30, 2025, Ethereum had marked ten years since its genesis block: a decade of operating “essentially flawlessly,” as Ethereum co-founder and Consensys CEO Joe Lubin had claimed. And now with 10 years of mostly continuous uptime, “zero” pauses, “zero maintenance windows,” as well as sixteen protocol upgrades have indicated that Ethereum is seemingly ready to be the backbone or foundation of the global financial services system.
ConsenSys claims that now increasingly, Wall Street agrees with this narrative.
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.”
More than 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.”
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.”
Indicative 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 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.”
MetaMask has also 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.”
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.”
As noted in the update:
“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 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 non-extractive tokenomics can attract capital.”
ConsenSys further stated that 2025 has seen “unprecedented levels of adoption at the institutional level, with the beginnings of the next mainstream moment peeking above the horizon.”
ConsenSys now predicts that 2026 is only going to be “bigger, as more and different kinds of organizations continue to develop on Ethereum, and they 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 risk-adjusted returns on ETH capital.”
MetaMask will expand into more “onchain assets and empower broader uses.”
ConsenSys concluded that the past decade indicated that Ethereum works and that the upcoming decade might “prove it can change the world.”