Ethereum's Decade of Dominance: 10 Key Data Points Reveal Its Continued Leading Position

Ethereum has been around for ten years. After ten years of continuous operation on the mainnet, the on-chain data in 2025 shows that its activity is still experiencing explosive growth.

Despite some alternative public chains and Ethereum's own Layer 2 networks siphoning off some user activity, Ethereum remains the core of the crypto economy. In terms of developer momentum, censorship resistance, and numerous key on-chain metrics, it continues to lead industry development.

So, what does this pioneer of smart contracts look like after ten years of development? The following 10 sets of core data showcase Ethereum's enduring dominance.

1. Stablecoin Supply

Since stablecoins began circulating on-chain in 2017, the supply of stablecoins on the Ethereum network has been expanding at an astonishing rate. Aside from a brief decline during the most severe period of the last crypto bear market, the on-chain supply of stablecoins on the Ethereum network has historically maintained an upward trend, surpassing the $100 billion mark by the end of 2024, with no recent signs of slowing down.

Currently, there are dozens of token issuers pegged to the US dollar, including some traditional financial giants. At the same time, recent legislation passed in the US is clearing the way for institutional adoption, and this sector, as an alternative medium for everyday payments, is also attracting the attention of mainstream observers.

2. Total Value Locked (TVL)

Despite multiple L1 competitive chains and their integrated L2 networks diverting the locked value of Ethereum itself, the chain still ranks among the leading blockchains in terms of Total Locked Value (TVL). TVL represents the amount of value that users trust and deposit into the on-chain financial system.

Although during the last bear market, the TVL of Ethereum was severely impacted by the plummeting cryptocurrency prices, since April of this year, this figure has been experiencing explosive growth, reaching a new cycle high of over $88 billion and is actively chasing a new all-time high.

3. Active Users

Even though some user activities in the Ethereum ecosystem have migrated to L2, it has not slowed down the growth of daily active users on Ethereum, which recently hit a historical high of 580,000 unique addresses.

In the past bear market, the number of daily active addresses remained stable and continued to rise throughout 2025, with more and more users turning to Ethereum L1 to access the unique attributes offered by the world's leading on-chain financial ecosystem.

If the active addresses on Ethereum L2 are included in the calculation, this growth is even more astonishing; a single trading platform's L2 has 1.3 million active addresses daily. Meanwhile, other leading L2s have added another 1.2 million addresses.

4. Daily Trading Volume

With the increase in active users on Ethereum L1, the number of transactions has also grown. Since October 2023, the daily transaction volume has been steadily rising, currently maintaining a baseline of over 1.7 million transactions per day.

Although this indicator can spike dramatically during periods of intense speculation, Ethereum's daily trading volume has shown a generally upward trend historically, with a total of 2.9 billion transactions completed since the network's genesis.

When accounting for the numerous L2s of Ethereum, this statistic appears increasingly optimistic. Including leading L2s, the daily activity volume of the Ethereum ecosystem far exceeds 500 million transactions.

5. Institutional Adoption

In 2025, Ethereum became a well-known smart contract platform favored by institutional players. Trump chose the Ethereum network as the home for his "World Freedom Financial Project" in 2024, joining this trend early on. A banking giant deployed deposit tokens on a certain L2 chain this June, while Ethereum L1 has established itself as the dominant platform for real-world assets (RWA), controlling nearly $7 billion in value and holding 54% market share in the field.

In recent months, the Ethereum treasury company has outperformed its Bitcoin competitors with a significant price surge. Similarly, the inflow of Ethereum ETFs has also skyrocketed in the past few weeks, attracting hundreds of millions of dollars daily, indicating that the Ethereum craze is sweeping the retail market.

6. Resistance to Censorship

Ethereum L1 prides itself on its anti-censorship capabilities, providing an open financial system by allowing anyone to broadcast transactions without worrying that their operational ability will be compromised by a single actor or nation-state.

Unlike other crypto networks that frequently roll back chains to prevent funds from falling into the hands of bad actors, Ethereum's culture is unique in its blind trust in code, ensuring that all transactions are final, regardless of the consequences.

These values extend to block building, where most block builders choose to handle all transactions, regardless of whether the address or smart contract has been flagged as malicious by nation-state actors.

Since Trump took office, compliance with the 2025 sanctions list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the United States has significantly declined, and major block builders have pledged to process all transactions regardless of their origin.

In addition, leading Ethereum developers are still committed to adopting "inclusion lists," which will force all validators and block builders to include transactions solely based on fees.

7. Active Developers

The status of the Ethereum core developer community remains strong! Although the number of active developers is lower than the peak during the last bull market cycle, the number of active core Ethereum developers (with 186 independent contributors) still exceeds that of all other crypto projects.

The Ethereum EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) has become the default standard for blockchain-based development, and its applications enjoy broad compatibility on mainstream chains.

8. Economic Security

Since the initial launch of the "Beacon Chain" staking in November 2020, the amount of staked ETH has been steadily increasing, except for a few very brief interruptions.

With the explosive price trend of ETH, the continuous rise in ETH staking has pushed the "economic security" of Ethereum to a historic high of $140 billion.

With the increasing economic security of Ethereum, various users can trade more confidently, knowing that their assets are increasingly protected from malicious actors who may manipulate the blockchain ledger.

9. Contract Deployment Volume

The existence of blockchain is to serve user transactions, while the volume of contract deployments provides insights into the evolving scope of on-chain activities.

These contracts can range from simple token deployments to complex applications, but each new contract represents a potential new behavior or use case for users. In this way, contract deployments can serve as a signal for on-chain innovation and the growth of practicality.

Although the deployment of Ethereum contracts has slowed down at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, there has been a fierce development boom in recent months, with the daily deployment of new contracts exceeding 200,000 multiple times this year. Although developers have shifted to L2, Ethereum L1 remains a vibrant hub of activity.

10. ETH Price

The price of ETH can be said to be the most关注的 success indicator for any crypto project. Although Ethereum has struggled for years in competition with other alternative cryptocurrencies, the token has made a strong rebound since May 2025, appreciating 75% against Bitcoin.

Ethereum has become one of the best-performing crypto assets in recent months, with the enthusiasm of crypto natives and institutional investors for ETH nearly doubling its industry dominance.

Although Ethereum is still 10% away from its all-time high, recent price performance suggests that this target could be achieved within a few days. Looking at the logarithmic chart, breaking through this level could bring it just one step away from $10,000.