The Defiant

Camila Russo & Olivia Capozzalo
August 15, 2025

Happy Friday, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

Ethereum network activity is surging and ETFs are seeing record inflows, while the price of ETH flirts with new ATH

In other news:

Ethereum stakers rush to exit on ETH price pump, sending queue to record highs
Monero faces a network reorg, while the community is split over blockchain Qubic’s self-proclaimed role
RWA platform Centrifuge TVL surpasses $1 billion after migration to Ethereum
Stablecoins are set to capture $1 trillion in global payments by 2030, says Keyrock
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Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

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We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Last 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$118,707	-0.52 %
Ethereum	$4,638.3	1.00 %
XRP	$3.12	0.09 %
BNB	$846.51	0.45 %
Solana	$194.48	-0.85 %

MessariPortals	MINDSHARE Rank	MINDSHARE % Change (7d)
		0.49%
		57.75%
		-56.73%
Powered by Messari Portals

Today’s Big Story

Ethereum’s Biggest Week of the Year

Ethereum has spent the past week sending an unambiguous message: the ticker is ETH.

Record-breaking ETF inflows, swelling corporate treasuries, surging on-chain activity, all while ETH reaches for a new all-time high. All in all, it’s been one of the best weeks of the year for Ethereum.

U.S. spot ETH ETFs are about to close their largest week on record. As of Thursday, inflows have already reached nearly $3 billion, with Monday alone pulling in over $1 billion, the single biggest day since launch. The rest of the week had multiple days above $500–700 million in net inflows.

For perspective, Bitcoin ETFs, which usually dominate these headlines, have managed just $562 million in total net inflows this week, according to SoSoValue data. We haven’t had a market cap flippening, but we’re seeing it among ETF investors’ enthusiasm.

Treasuries Are Stacking ETH

Corporate treasuries have also been quietly loading up. ETH treasury companies now hold around 2% of total supply, according to Blockworks data, a massive shift for an asset whose largest holders used to be mostly early whales and long-time DeFi participants. These aren’t token-tourists chasing hype; they’re companies allocating a significant portion of their balance sheets into Ethereum as a long-term strategic reserve. That kind of structural demand doesn’t evaporate overnight.

On-Chain Is Even More Bullish

But as always, to really figure out what’s happening with a blockchain, you have to look at on-chain data. Investor hype and narratives can come and go, but crypto transactions live forever (literally!); and for Ethereum, that analysis is even more bullish: Daily active addresses? At a record this week. Stablecoin transfer volume? Record. DEX volume? Highest since 2022. Daily transactions? Record!

What’s curious is that this explosion in network activity hasn’t translated into higher fees. Average transaction fees are down, and total network revenue (or what the protocol earns from gas fees) has dropped in recent weeks. Part of that is thanks to continued efficiency gains from rollups and Layer 2 adoption, which have siphoned demand off the base layer without reducing overall network utility.

Just a couple of months ago, lower fee revenue might have been spun as bearish (including by me, admittedly) evidence that Etheruem’s Layer 2-centric roadmap was eroding ETH value. But today, the market seems to have moved past that narrative. ETH’s price action this week shows investors aren’t measuring network health purely by fee burns anymore; instead, they’re looking at the broader picture: user growth, capital inflows, and strategic accumulation.

Price: Marching Toward All-Time Highs

All of this has played out against a surging price backdrop. ETH touched a yearly high, crossing $4,700 and approaching $4,800 mid-week. The price then briefly corrected, and has been holding above $4,400. That’s a roughly 11% gain in just one week, leaving ETH within striking distance of its all-time high from November 2021. Unlike previous runs driven by memecoin frenzies or retail mania, this rally is more institutional and anchored in fundamentals.

This week has crystallized a shift in the Ethereum investment thesis. For years, the debate has been about whether ETH could truly capture institutional interest in the same way Bitcoin has. The ETF flows, treasury allocations, and on-chain growth suggest that that question is now settled.

Enjoy your weekend,

Cami, founder of The Defiant

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🎬WATCH

DeFi’s Dance with Fintech: Choreographing Tomorrow’s Finance with Paul Frambot

In the latest episode of The Defiant Podcast, Cami sat down with Paul Frambot, co-founder of Morpho. They discuss how DeFi is transforming the financial industry by intersecting with fintech, shifting value to network users, and reshaping how lending protocols work.

Paul outlines the evolution from early peer-to-peer lending to today's permissionless, immutable infrastructure, highlighting Morpho's product design, its approach to risk management, and specific use cases in institutional finance and global wallet integration.

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Discover how innovations like Mezo are enabling new ways to use Bitcoin, such as Bitcoin-backed mortgages and stablecoins, which play a crucial role in lending. Matt also discusses the importance of security in Bitcoin systems, the demand for fixed rates and low borrowing costs, and how acquisitions like Lolli aim to expand Bitcoin's utility globally.

Top News in the Past 24 Hours

Ethereum Stakers Rush to Exit on Price Pump Ethereum validators are requesting to unstake more than 800,000 ETH as of today. As a result, the wait time to exit ETH validator staking is also quite high at the moment, with an over two week wait time to unstake ETH. Prior to July 2025, the unstaking queue only reached higher than a one day wait time twice, but has been stuck at over a week for all of August.
Monero Faces Network Reorg as Community Split over Qubic’s Role Privacy blockchain Monero faced unusual activity this week after smaller-cap blockchain project Qubic revealed a brief takeover of Monero’s mining power. The move has sparked debate over what actually happened and what it means for the privacy coin.
Centrifuge Surpasses $1 Billion in TVL as Broader RWA Heats UpCentrifuge’s TVL has grown nearly 94% in two weeks to break over $1 billion as of yesterday. The milestone places the RWA platform among a small group of top players with significant on-chain value, including Securitize, which tokenized BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, and Ondo Finance.
Stablecoins Poised to Capture $1 Trillion in Global Payments by 2030: Keyrock Stablecoins are set to become a larger player in global finance, capturing a projected 12% of cross-border payment flows and reaching $1 trillion in annual payment volume by 2030, according to a new report by investment firm Keyrock.
FEATURE: Circle’s Arc Layer 1 Re-ignites the Open Versus Permissioned Chain Debate Circle’s newly launched Arc, described by the firm as an open Layer 1 blockchain, is dividing experts across the crypto community, with some saying its design undermines the principles of decentralized finance, and others calling it a practical step that boosts USDC’s infrastructure.