Ethereum

📊 Is ETH becoming more of a speculative asset than a utility token?

Ethereum’s transaction data suggests a shift:

Token transfers up 22.7% in Q4 2024, but 63.95% were wallet-to-wallet & stablecoin moves.

DeFi transactions fell to 17.42%, signaling lower ETH demand in dApps.

MEV activity dropped to just 2.49%, reducing speculative arbitrage.

With DeFi users migrating to L2s & L1s like Solana for cheaper, faster transactions, ETH is increasingly used for asset movement rather than network-driven activity.

The utility for ETH is constantly increasing. The problem that we have right now is that we do not have catchy metrics to show that in simple terms to the mentally challenged.

Imagine you write the same post about the US Dollar in the middle of Manhattan. All you see is people paying for everything with weird plastic cards and clunky mobile devices. And nobody is paying with USD anymore! Oh nooo! What you don't see is the largest economy and its technological foundation. There is a lot of sampling bias here.

L2s are already cheaper and faster than Solana. MEV will be ever more captured by products that enable multipliers of economic activity. ETH will be ever more exported and utilized as we expand Ethereum's real estate. The better mental model is about emerging phenomena of economic activity. We do not have good metrics about this yet.

The notion of transaction counts and MEV will become ever more meaningless. Imagine valuing Facebook by TPS.

This is the alt account of Sister Hazel. Writings at https://powerlaw.systems. Curating https://protocol-particles.github.io.

That is a good point, thinking of Ethereum as a robust settlement layer (which is the direction its heading) makes data like transactions less relevant.