Ethereum's recent trend is quite interesting. As of early September, the 24-hour trading volume of this leading smart contract platform was about $19.6 billion, down 12.8% month-over-month, indicating a clear cooling of short-term trading activity. Looking at its performance over the past week, the seven-day increase was only 0.2%, which was actually overshadowed by the overall crypto market average gain of 0.7%.

A detail worth noting is that the US regulatory authorities approved a spot ETH ETF in May last year, and by July this year, it was officially listed on mainstream exchanges such as Nasdaq and NYSE. However, these ETF products are limited by regulatory frameworks, preventing investors from directly participating in on-chain staking through the ETF, and thus they cannot access that portion of staking rewards. This is somewhat disappointing for institutions seeking cash flow.

On the other hand, the allocation logic of institutional funds is quietly changing. Since a large publicly listed company included Bitcoin on its balance sheet last year, more and more mainstream enterprises have started to view Ethereum as a yield-bearing reserve asset. They obtain on-chain cash flow through staking or by connecting to DeFi protocols, using this as a substitute for low-yield traditional cash positions—this approach is increasingly attractive to institutions.

From the market landscape, Ethereum has a circulating supply of about 120 million tokens, ranking second by market cap on CoinGecko, only behind Bitcoin. Although recent prices have experienced some adjustments, from an institutional deployment perspective, the demand for this platform still exists.