As of March 2025, Ethereum has a strong hold on the decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) markets. This uniquely favorable posture is further supplemented by unprecedented development of new technology and a recent explosion in market activity. The network absolutely crushes the DeFi competition, holding more than $45 billion TVL. It does this in a unique way, enabling you to do this across a wide array of protocols. During the first quarter of this year, the NFT market on Ethereum surged to $5.8 billion in trading volume. This record-breaking figure is a 21% increase from 2022.

On Ethereum, the average staking duration would be around 11.2 months with 70% of stakers taking long-term positions. More than 30 million ETH—from a maximum supply of 120 million ETH—are currently staked in Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) system. Validator participation is at an all-time high of 99.5%, a testament to their uptime and the reliability of the network.

Over the past year, layer-2 (L2) scaling solutions, like Arbitrum and Optimism, which are built on Ethereum, have experienced tremendous success. The total value locked passing $27 billion represents a 37% increase from one year ago! As of Q1 2025, Ethereum is handling an astonishing average of 1.65 million transactions per day. That’s a huge increase from the 1.3 million transactions logged at the start of 2024. The network's average gas fees have significantly decreased to $3.78 per transaction, down from over $18 in early 2022, enhancing its accessibility and usability.

Thanks to its transition to a PoS consensus mechanism, Ethereum's energy consumption is now 99.95% lower than Bitcoin's. Today, the network accounts for 18.7% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization worldwide. In the case of the stablecoin market, Ethereum is far and away the leader with $82.1 billion, or 60% of the total market cap.

EigenLayer, Ethereum's re-staking protocol, has quickly gained traction, surpassing $6 billion in deposits within six months of its public mainnet launch. The 30-day Ethereum volatility index is 28.3%, below its historical averages, indicating a positive shift towards a bit more stability. Its current annualized burn rate is 1.32%, mainly due to the EIP-1559 mechanism of the base fee which was just recently implemented.