An Analysis of the Solana Re-Staking Market, Nurturing Exciting New DeFi Opportunities
Original Article Title: The bullish case for Solana (Re)staking
Original Author: tradetheflow_, Crypto Researcher
Original Translation: Ashley, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: Currently, Ethereum is the main battleground for restaking, but with Solana's rapid development in this bull market cycle, its low cost, high throughput, and strong network effects make it a potential hotbed for restaking. The author explores the market opportunity for Solana restaking, including its ecosystem maturity, innovative potential, network scalability, and optimization for DeFi capital efficiency.
The following is the original content (slightly reorganized for better readability):
Restaking is a simple yet powerful concept: it allows staked assets to be reused across multiple decentralized services, or what Jito calls Node Consensus Networks (NCNs).
This approach brings several advantages. Most notably, it enhances the security and integrity of decentralized services, enabling them to leverage Layer 1 economic security without having to expend significant resources designing their own security model (which is often more fragile). For stakers, it also improves capital efficiency, as a single asset can simultaneously secure multiple decentralized services, potentially achieving a higher return on capital.
In fact, many industry thought leaders believe that restaking is a disruptive innovation that can build a more secure, flexible, and scalable blockchain environment, accelerating industry development. This has also attracted high market attention, making restaking one of the largest tracks by TVL on Ethereum.

However, so far, restaking has been mainly concentrated on Ethereum, as it is considered the blockchain with the highest current economic security and broadest PoS adoption. But with Solana's strong growth during this bull market cycle—especially in contrast to Ethereum's mainnet activity relatively stagnant and significant liquidity moving to L2 solutions (like Base)—a new question arises: Does Solana have enough reasons to support restaking?
In this article, we will explore the potential of restaking on Solana from various perspectives and analyze the feasibility of this market opportunity. Let's delve deeper.
Solana's Maturity is Sufficient to Support Staking
For staking to occur, the underlying blockchain must have strong economic security. This has been Ethereum's advantage all along: currently, the Ethereum mainnet has 34.3 million ETH staked (worth about $124 billion), 4,701 block producing validators, six consensus clients, and as one of the longest-standing and most reliable blockchains for application development, it has a high industry reputation. Therefore, Ethereum has become the preferred platform for staking.
However, humans tend to extrapolate the present into the future, assuming that Ethereum will always maintain its dominant position. Yet history tells us that technological disruptions are often driven by creative destruction. For example, there was a time when Yahoo was considered the dominant player in the search engine space, only to be surpassed by Google later on. Similarly, IBM was once thought to be the ultimate winner in the personal computing space, but eventually, Apple took over.

So, are we witnessing a similar moment in Ethereum's history? Is it still necessary to have the entire staking stack rely entirely on Ethereum? Especially as trends show new asset issuance on the Ethereum mainnet shifting towards L1s like Solana or L2s like Base, and with increased uncertainty about Ethereum's development direction, we need to reconsider this issue.

If we consider staking to be indeed a game-changing technology, then we should consider expanding it to other L1s, not just limiting it to Ethereum. This would allow developers to freely choose from which consensus layer to derive trust.
In this context, Solana is undoubtedly a strong candidate for staking. Since this bull market, Solana has become the fastest-growing L1 and has significantly improved its economic security and ecosystem maturity. Currently, about 65% of SOL's circulating supply is staked, with a total value of around $73 billion (compared to $24 billion just a year ago). Additionally, Solana has close to 1,400 block producing validator nodes and supports two existing client validators, with future additions like Firedancer, Sig, and Agave.

More importantly, Solana is known for its extremely low transaction costs and fast transaction speeds, with increasing adoption among users and developer communities. Solana is currently the fastest public chain in the crypto industry for application development, achieving true organic growth and successfully overcoming the cold start problem, establishing a strong network effect. All of this indicates that Solana's ecosystem is mature enough, making staking on Solana a practical possibility.

Re-Staking on Solana Holds Greater Potential than Ethereum
Ethereum is a smart contract pioneer, but its high Gas fees have limited the development scope of on-chain applications. Solana's architecture, on the other hand, allows developers to create richer application forms at the L1 level. Therefore, it can be argued that the design space for re-staking on Solana is larger than that of Ethereum.

Firstly, Solana's low transaction costs and computational costs have lowered the entry barrier for Node Consensus Networks (NCNs). Unlike Ethereum, where a high fixed cost restricts participation, Solana supports smaller-scale, cost-effective, and more efficient NCNs deployments, allowing optimization for specific use cases. This not only enables more services to be outsourced, reducing reliance on direct on-chain applications, but also enhances the ecosystem's interoperability.
Secondly, NCNs on Solana can handle more complex operations, and code can be deployed more densely without impacting on-chain computing capability—unlike Ethereum's EigenLayer design. This enables on-chain verifiability, on-chain reward distribution, and on-chain data publication, enhancing the overall flexibility and robustness of re-staking. While Ethereum has served as a testing ground for re-staking, in the long run, Solana's re-staking potential in real-world applications seems greater.
Furthermore, in terms of Valuable Re-Staking Tokens (VRTs), Solana also has significant advantages over Ethereum. On one hand, Solana's low costs can significantly reduce the operational costs of liquidity VRT providers. In a business model where every basis point is crucial, this cost optimization not only increases profitability but also promotes market competition, creating a more vibrant ecosystem where different VRTs can offer diversified re-staking strategies and more flexible slashing conditions.
On the other hand, liquidity re-staking on Solana is more affordable for users because low transaction costs lower the entry barrier, allowing them to more conveniently use liquidity VRTs in various DeFi applications without constantly worrying about high fees. This is crucial for driving long-term capital inflows.
Re-Staking Can Drive Innovation on the Solana Network
The vision of Solana has always been to become a global computing interface that allows everyone to build applications on top of it. To achieve this goal, Solana has been focused on increasing the underlying chain's throughput and reducing latency.

This is a strong and reasonable vision. However, physical laws cannot be defied, and we cannot increase throughput by 10x or reduce latency by 10x in a short period of time. Achieving an order of magnitude improvement requires significant resources and long-term efforts. Therefore, although it may not be achievable in the short term, people have gradually realized that not all computation needs to happen on L1. This point is also reflected in recent discussions about "network extensions."

From this perspective, re-staking can bring new design possibilities for the extension of the Solana network and the "network extensions" plan. The design space is vast, and although it is currently unclear how this mechanism will be specifically implemented, it is likely to evolve into a powerful infrastructure-level extension tool. For example, the @SonicSVM project claims to be the first Layer 2 specifically designed for sovereign games in the Solana ecosystem, built on HyperGrid, the horizontal scaling framework for the Solana virtual machine. The project plans to leverage Jito (Re)staking to enhance the security and operational efficiency of its SVM, supporting multi-functional applications in the Solana ecosystem, including gaming, DeFi, and other use cases.
In addition, the strong security provided by the re-staking mechanism can effectively enhance the reliability of the Solana network. For example, Jito TipRouter NCN is currently under development, aiming to decentralize MEV tip distribution and enhance its security. Another example is Nozomi, a protocol launched by @temporal_xyz, which will use Jito (Re)staking to reshape Solana's transaction microstructure and address issues such as sandwich attacks, slippage, and transaction timeouts. These innovations align with Solana's long-term vision and can significantly optimize user experience, making Solana not only fast and cost-effective but also more secure, stable, and user-friendly.
In addition to high performance and robust on-chain data metrics, Solana also embodies an entrepreneurial spirit. Over the past few years, we have witnessed the rise of a series of successful projects such as Jito, Kamino, Jupiter, and Helium. But this is just the beginning, as the number of projects choosing to build in the Solana ecosystem continues to grow.

If Solana is becoming the preferred public chain for developers, then Once staking will undoubtedly have a place in it. It can extend Solana's economic security to a range of key services in its ecosystem, such as oracles, cross-chain bridges, and sorters, even though these components usually do not run directly on L1 but are still crucial parts of the ecosystem.
While smart contracts and their interactions benefit from Solana's security, these peripheral components often still require independent economic security guarantees. This means that either they need to raise a significant amount of capital to incentivize validators or compromise on security. This can lead to a paradox: the smart contract layer may be secure, and the computational results correct, but if the oracle provides incorrect data, the entire system is still at risk. From a security perspective, the security of the entire system ultimately depends on its weakest link.
Therefore, some key services in the Solana ecosystem can leverage Once staking to enhance their security. For example, @switchboardxyz, a permissionless oracle network on Solana, is collaborating with Jito (Re)staking to ensure the reliability of its data sources. If this pattern successfully takes hold, it will simultaneously enhance the security and stability of the Solana network.
Once Staking Optimizes DeFi Users' Capital Efficiency
Once staking offers a higher annualized return compared to regular staking on Solana. Since one of the core goals of DeFi users is to optimize capital efficiency, Once staking has become a highly attractive option. It allows DeFi users on Solana to unlock new yield opportunities without additional capital injection. For example, instead of purchasing liquidity staking tokens to earn SOL staking rewards and use them in the DeFi ecosystem, users can opt to buy liquidity once staking tokens, not only achieving a higher APY but also continuing to operate freely within the DeFi ecosystem.
Considering the rapid growth of DeFi in the Solana ecosystem, we can assume that a mechanism that optimizes capital efficiency will help attract significant liquidity in the long term. In fact, DeFi activity on Solana is surging, with the total value locked in Solana DeFi growing from $1 billion to $10 billion in the past year, and the growth trend remains strong, further demonstrating the market potential of Solana's Once staking.

Summary
Re-staking on Solana is still in the early experimental stage, but it has already shown tremendous potential, and many interesting use cases are gradually emerging. Assuming that, in the long run, Solana can capture a market share comparable to Ethereum's staking market, its market opportunity will be significant.
Currently, Solana's re-staking infrastructure is mainly dominated by two core protocols: Solayer and Jito (Re)staking. As a pioneer, Solayer has already built a complete re-staking stack and achieved over $3.5 billion TVL. However, in the long term, Jito is more likely to become the dominant player in this narrative. With a strong technical foundation, the highest TVL in the Solana ecosystem, and a clear vision, Jito has established its leadership position in the Solana ecosystem. Furthermore, Jito's re-staking stack is designed to be highly flexible and has built-in liquidity re-staking token integration from the start, while supporting multiple assets, further enhancing its future growth potential.
Nevertheless, I would like to conclude with a quote from Freeman Dyson:
“When a great innovation appears, it will almost always be in a chaotic, incomplete, and confusing form. Even its discoverers can only understand half of it, and for others, it is a mystery. If an idea does not seem crazy at first, it has no hope.”
This quote perfectly describes the current state of Solana re-staking: early-stage, full of potential, and nurturing brand new DeFi opportunities.
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$COIN Joins S&P 500, but Coinbase Isn't Celebrating
On May 13, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Coinbase would officially replace Discover Financial Services in the S&P 500 on May 19. While other companies like Block and MicroStrategy, closely tied to Bitcoin, were already part of the S&P 500, Coinbase became the first cryptocurrency exchange whose primary business is in the index. This also signifies that cryptocurrency is gradually moving from the fringes to the mainstream in the U.S.
On the day of the announcement, Coinbase's stock price surged by 23%, surpassing the $250 mark. However, just 3 days later, Coinbase was hit by two consecutive events: a hack where employees were bribed to steal customer data and a demand for a $20 million ransom, and an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into the authenticity of its claim of having over 100 million "verified users" in its securities filings and marketing materials. These two events acted as mini-bombs, and at the time of writing, Coinbase's stock had already dropped by over 7.3%.
Coincidentally, Discover Financial Services, being replaced by Coinbase, can also be considered the "Coinbase" of the previous payment era. Discover is a U.S.-based digital banking and payment services company headquartered in Illinois, founded in 1960. Its payment network, Discover Network, is the fourth largest payment network apart from Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.
In April, after the approval of the acquisition of Discover by the sixth-largest U.S. bank, Capital One, this well-established digital banking company of over 60 years smoothly handed over its S&P 500 "seat" to this emerging cryptocurrency "bank." This unexpected coincidence also portrayed the handover between the new and old eras in Coinbase's entry into the S&P 500, resembling a relay race scene. However, this relay baton also brought Coinbase's accumulated "external troubles and internal strife" to a tipping point.
Over the past decade, cryptocurrency exchanges have been the most stable "profit machines." They play a role in providing liquidity to the entire industry and rely on trading fees to sustain their operations. However, with the comprehensive rollout of ETF products in the U.S. market, this profit model is facing unprecedented challenges. As the leader in the "American stack," with over 80% of its business coming from the U.S., Coinbase is most affected by this.
Starting from the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, traditional financial capital has significantly onboarded users and funds that originally belonged to exchanges in a more cost-effective, compliant, and transparent manner. The transaction fee revenue of cryptocurrency exchanges has started to decline, and this trend may further intensify in the coming months.
According to Coinbase's 2024 Q4 financial report, the platform's total trading revenue was $417 million, a 45% year-on-year decrease. The contribution of BTC and ETH's trading revenue dropped from 65% in the same period last year to less than 50%.
This decline is not a result of a decrease in market enthusiasm. In fact, since the approval of the Bitcoin ETF in January 2024, the inflow of BTC into the U.S. market has continued to reach new highs, with asset management giants like BlackRock and Fidelity rapidly expanding their management scale. Data shows that BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) alone has surpassed $17 billion in assets under management. As of mid-May 2025, the cumulative net inflow of 11 major institutional Bitcoin spot ETFs on the market has exceeded $41.5 billion, with a total net asset value of $1214.69 billion, accounting for approximately 5.91% of the total Bitcoin market capitalization.
Institutional investors and some retail investors are shifting towards ETF products, partly due to compliance and tax considerations. On one hand, ETFs have much lower trading costs compared to cryptocurrency exchanges. While Coinbase's spot trading fee rate varies annually in a tiered manner but averages around 1.49%, for example, the management fee for IBIT ETF is only 0.25%, and the majority of ETF institution fees fluctuate around 0.15% to 0.25%.
In other words, the more rational users are, the more likely they are to move from exchanges to ETF products, especially for investors aiming for long-term holdings.
According to multiple sources, several institutions, including VanEck and Grayscale, have submitted applications to the SEC for a Solana (SOL) ETF, with some institutions also planning to submit an XRP ETF proposal. Once approved, this may trigger a new round of fund migration. According to a report submitted by Coinbase to the SEC, as of April, the platform's trading revenue from XRP and Solana accounted for 18% and 10%, nearly one-third of the platform's fee revenue.
However, the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs passed in 2024 also reduced the fees for these two tokens on Coinbase from 30% and 15% to 26% and 10%, respectively. If the SOL and XRP ETFs are approved, it will further undermine the core fee revenue of exchanges like Coinbase.
The expansion of ETF products is gradually weakening the financial intermediary status of cryptocurrency exchanges. From their original roles as matchmakers and clearers to now gradually becoming mere "on-ramps and off-ramps" for funds, exchanges are seeing their marginal value squeezed by ETFs.
On May 12, 2025, SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins gave a keynote speech at the Tokenization and Cryptocurrency Working Group roundtable. The theme of his speech revolved around "It is a new day at the SEC," where he indicated that the SEC would not approach enforcement and regulation the same way as before but would instead pave the way for cryptocurrency assets in the U.S. market.
With signs of cryptocurrency compliance such as the SEC's "NEW DAY" declaration, an increasing number of traditional brokerages are attempting to enter the cryptocurrency industry. One of the most representative cases is the well-known U.S. brokerage Robinhood, which began expanding its crypto business in 2018. By the time of its IPO in 2021, Robinhood's crypto business revenue accounted for over 50% of the company, with a significant boost from the Dogecoin "moonshot" promoted by Musk.
In Q1 2025 earnings report, Robinhood showcased strong growth, especially in revenue from cryptocurrency and options trading. Fueled by Trump's Memecoin, cryptocurrency-related revenue reached $250 million, nearly doubling year-over-year. Consequently, Robinhood Gold subscription users reached 3.5 million, a 90% increase from the previous year, with the rapid growth of Robinhood Gold providing the company with a stable source of income.
Meanwhile, RobinHood is actively pursuing acquisitions in the cryptocurrency space. In 2024, it announced a $2 billion acquisition of the long-standing European cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp. Additionally, Canada's largest cryptocurrency CEX, WonderFi, which recently went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange, also announced its integration with RobinHood Crypto. After obtaining virtual asset licenses in the UK, Canada, Singapore, and other markets, RobinHood has taken a proactive approach in the compliant cryptocurrency trading market.
Furthermore, an increasing number of brokerage firms are exploring the same path. Futu Securities, Tiger Brokers, and others are also dipping their toes into cryptocurrency trading, with some having applied for or obtained the VA license from the Hong Kong SFC. Although their user bases are currently small, traditional brokerages have a natural advantage in user trust, regulatory licenses, and low fee structures. This could pose a threat to native cryptocurrency platforms in the future.
In April 2025, security researchers discovered that some Coinbase user data was leaked on the dark web. While the platform initially responded by attributing it to a "technical misinformation," it still raised concerns among users regarding its security and privacy protection. Just two days before Dow Jones Indexes announced Coinbase's addition to the S&P 500 Index, on May 11, 2025, Coinbase received an email from an unknown threat actor claiming to have obtained customer account information and internal documents, demanding a $20 million ransom to keep the data private. Subsequent investigations confirmed the data breach.
Cybercriminals obtained the data by bribing overseas customer service agents and support staff, mainly in "non-U.S. regions such as India." These agents abused their access to Coinbase's internal customer support system and stole customer data. As early as February this year, blockchain detective ZachXBT revealed on X platform that between December 2024 and January 2025, Coinbase users lost over $65 million to social engineering scams, with the actual amount potentially higher.
Among the victims was a well-known figure, 67-year-old Ed Suman, an established artist in the art world for nearly two decades, having been involved in the creation of artworks such as Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog" sculpture. Earlier this year, he fell victim to an impersonation scam involving fake Coinbase customer support, resulting in a loss of over $2 million in cryptocurrency. ZachXBT critiqued Coinbase for its inadequate handling of such scams, noting that other major exchanges have not faced similar issues and recommending Coinbase to enhance its security measures.
Amidst a series of ongoing social engineering incidents, although there has not been any impact on user assets at the technical level so far, it has raised concerns among many retail and institutional investors. Especially institutions holding massive assets on Coinbase. Just considering the U.S. BTC ETF institutions, as of mid-May 2025, they collectively hold nearly 840,000 BTC, and 75% of these are custodied by Coinbase. If we price BTC at $100,000, this amount reaches a staggering $63 billion, which is equivalent to the nominal GDP of two Iceland in the year 2024.
In addition, Coinbase Custody also serves over 300 institutional clients, including hedge funds, family offices, pension funds, and endowments. As of the Q1 2025 financial report, Coinbase's total assets under management (including institutional and retail clients) reached $404 billion. The specific amount of institutional custodied assets was not explicitly disclosed in the latest report, but it should still be over 50% based on the Q4 2024 report.
Once this security barrier is breached, not only could the rate of user attrition far exceed expectations, but more importantly, institutional trust in it would undermine the foundation of its business. Therefore, after a hacking event, Coinbase's stock price plummeted significantly.
Facing a decline in spot trading fee revenue, Coinbase is also accelerating its transformation, attempting to find growth opportunities in derivatives and emerging assets. Coinbase acquired a stake in the options platform Deribit at the end of 2024 and announced the official launch of perpetual contract products in 2025. This acquisition fills in Coinbase's gap in options trading and its relatively small global market share.
Deribit has a strong presence in non-U.S. markets, especially in Asia and Europe. The acquisition has enabled Coinbase to gain a dominant position in bitcoin and ethereum options trading on Deribit, accounting for approximately 80% of the global options trading volume, with daily trading volume remaining above $2 billion.
Meanwhile, 80-90% of Deribit's customer base consists of institutional investors, with their professionalism and liquidity in the Bitcoin and Ethereum options market highly favored by institutions. Coinbase's compliance advantage, coupled with its already robust institutional ecosystem, makes it even more suitable. By using institutions as an entry point, it can face the squeeze from giants like Binance and OKX in the derivatives market.
Facing a similar dilemma is Kraken, which is attempting to replicate Binance Futures' model in non-U.S. markets. Since the derivatives market relies more on professional users, fee rates are relatively higher and stickiness is stronger, making it a significant source of revenue for exchanges. In the first half of 2025, Kraken completed the acquisition of TradeStation Crypto and a futures exchange, aiming to build a complete derivatives trading ecosystem to hedge the risk of declining spot transaction fee income.
With the surge of Memecoin in 2024, Binance, OKX, and various CEX platforms began massively listing small-market-cap, highly volatile tokens to activate active trading users. Due to the wealth effect and trading activity of Memecoins, Coinbase was also forced to join the battle, successively listing popular tokens from the Solana ecosystem such as BOOK OF MEME and Dogwifhat. Although these coins are controversial, they are frequently traded, with fee rates several times higher than mainstream coins, serving as a "blood-boosting" method for spot trading.
However, due to its status as a publicly traded company, this practice is a riskier endeavor for Coinbase. Even in the current crypto-friendly environment, the SEC is still investigating whether tokens like SOL, ADA, and SAND constitute securities.
In addition to the forced transformation strategies carried out by the aforementioned CEXs, they are also starting to lay out RWAs and the most talked-about stablecoin payment fields, such as the PYUSD launched through a collaboration between Coinbase and Paypal, Coinbase's support for the Euro stablecoin EURC by Circle that complies with EU MiCA regulatory requirements, or the USD1 launched through a collaboration between Binance and WIFL. In the increasingly crowded trading field, many CEXs have shifted their focus from just the trading market to the application field.
The golden age of transaction fees has quietly ended, and the second half of the crypto exchange platform game has silently begun.
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After Surging 40%, Has Ethereum Price Peaked Upon Exiting the Craze?
Whether you are an insider or an outsider, these days you must be familiar with the news about Ethereum. The reason is simple, causing Ethereum enthusiasts to sigh with emotion and almost throwing off-guard those who defend Ethereum, Ethereum, with a "3-day surge of 40%," climbed to the top of the Douyin Hot List.
As we all know, Ethereum launched the Pectra upgrade on May 7th. This most significant network upgrade since early 2024 integrates the Prague execution layer hard fork and the Electra consensus layer upgrade, significantly improving Ethereum's performance through 11 improvement proposals. The account abstraction feature (EIP-7702) allows users to flexibly manage wallets through social media accounts or multi-signature schemes, reducing the user threshold, attracting more users and developers. The staking mechanism optimization increases the validator ETH cap from 32ETH to 2048ETH and introduces a flexible withdrawal method, making it easier for institutions and individuals to participate in network security, enhancing the market's confidence in Ethereum's long-term value.
At the same time, Pectra optimized the interaction efficiency of Layer 2 networks such as Arbitrum and Optimism, making transactions faster and cheaper, leading to a surge in on-chain activity. As a crucial step for Ethereum's transition from "2G" to "5G," the Pectra upgrade not only enhances network vitality but also "recharges confidence" in the market, directly driving the price increase.
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It's not just Ethereum itself, as Wall Street also brought important bullish news.
The world's largest asset management company, BlackRock, proposed to the SEC allowing Ethereum ETFs for staking. This proposal is expected to elevate Ethereum ETFs from a mere investment tool to a bond-like "interest-bearing asset," bringing investors both capital appreciation and passive income, igniting market optimism about Ethereum's future potential.
Specifically, BlackRock has proposed to amend its S-1 filing to allow investors to create and redeem ETF shares directly with Ethereum instead of the U.S. dollar (i.e., in-kind redemption). This move, combined with its $2.9 billion BUIDL Fund launched in March 2024, aims to deepen the integration of traditional finance with blockchain. The BUIDL Fund is a tokenized fund operating on the Ethereum network, investing in traditional assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds. This setup is highly attractive to institutional investors, as they can not only benefit from Ethereum's price appreciation but also earn stable cash flow through staking.
Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock's Head of Digital Assets, stated in a CNBC interview in March 2025 that the addition of staking functionality will significantly enhance the appeal of the Ethereum ETF. He admitted that when the Ethereum spot ETF was launched in July 2024 without staking functionality, the market demand was lackluster, and staking could be the key to reversing this trend.
Meanwhile, the SEC's shifting stance on cryptocurrency regulation has also fueled this upward trend. During the tenure of the previous SEC chairman, the regulatory approach was tough, and staking was strictly viewed through the Howey test as a potential unregistered security. Therefore, when approving the Ethereum spot ETF in May 2024, staking functionality was explicitly prohibited.
However, with Trump back in the White House and Paul Atkins taking over the SEC, there has been a noticeable relaxation in crypto regulation. Apart from BlackRock, ETF issuers such as Invesco Galaxy, VanEck, WisdomTree, and 21Shares have also submitted applications for similar staking and in-kind redemption.
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If staking ETFs are approved, the benefits are likely to go beyond price appreciation. The introduction of staking functionality could redefine the role of crypto assets, making them more similar to traditional financial products that provide returns and value appreciation, thereby driving Ethereum closer to mainstream finance.
Currently, the SEC still needs to address several decisions related to crypto ETFs, including whether to approve ETFs for Solana, XRP, Litecoin, and even Dogecoin. With the calls for an "altcoin season" growing louder, Ethereum's strong performance may just be the beginning of a larger crypto market frenzy.
In addition, the Trump family-related DeFi project WLFI is also bullish on this wave of rise, with frequent on-chain activities. According to on-chain data analyst @ai_9684xtpa's monitoring, a WLFI-related address is currently borrowing coins to go long on ETH, borrowing 4 million U from Aave to buy 1590 ETH at an average price of $2515 per ETH.
For this epic surge of Ethereum after half a year of silence, the community has indeed gained more confidence and hope, which has also led to a revival of the entire altcoin market. However, amidst the joy, there are also voices of pessimism. Below is a summary conducted by BlockBeats based on community discussions.
The optimists point out that the current market structure is similar to the eve of the bull markets in 2016 and 2020, predicting a life-changing surge in the next 3-6 months, where some altcoins may even achieve astonishing single-day gains of up to 40%.
@liuwei16602825 stated that this surge signifies the return of the bull market as a sure thing. There is no need to worry about a pullback. The driving force behind the surge uses a high-cost isolated operation, fearing a drop more than any retail investor and will definitely do everything to support the price.
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The bears mainly believe that this surge is different from the bull market of 2021, as the current market lacks the confidence of large-scale retail investors entering and holding positions for the long term, with funds rotating too quickly.
@market_beggar observed that a Bitfinex E/B whale has started to close positions and believes that if this whale maintains its high-speed position-closing operation for the next few days, it can be inferred that the whale no longer sees the upside potential of ETH, preparing to take profits and exit. The closing time will be a key focus going forward.
@FLS_OTC stated that there are still many uncertainties at the macro level, and the liquidity cannot support a major bull market. At this stage, it is a "last hurrah," not a complete reversal, and will continue to remain in a short position.
@off_thetarget believes that after ETH transitioned from POW to POS, it lost the "gold standard" of mining machine power cost support. The staking economic model led to a breakdown in value anchoring. Additionally, the L2 ecosystem (such as Starknet, zkSync, etc.) suffered from liquidity fragmentation, failing to establish an effective capital inflow mechanism, causing the collapse of the split disc pattern. Furthermore, the ETH community's excessive pursuit of technical narratives divorced from real-world needs resulted in a weak ecosystem growth. Therefore, he believes that ETH's intrinsic value system has crumbled, and the price is bound to plummet to the 800-1200 range, with a decisive short position at 1800.
@Airdrop_Guard, based on the core logic of the "High Probability Trading Strategy," where three sets of underlying logic different trading systems (such as volume depletion, price supply-demand, long/short position funding rate, etc.) simultaneously issue a short signal at the same point (2580), creating a high-probability trading opportunity. He emphasizes that these systems must be based on different algorithms and logics (rather than mere technical indicator overlays). The current ETH trend aligns with the short conditions in multiple independent dimensions of his trading system, hence the decision to short.
Overall, Bitcoin still maintains over 54% market dominance, and institutional funds' continued preference for it may limit the altcoin's upward potential. The market's future direction will depend on multiple factors, such as Bitcoin's price trend, global macroeconomic conditions, and whether funds can effectively rotate from Bitcoin to the altcoin sector.
Although Ethereum's recent leadership in the market has brought about optimistic sentiment, investors still need to remain rational as different sectors of altcoins are likely to show divergence in trends. Whether this round of Ethereum's rise will usher in a true altcoin frenzy may require more time and conducive conditions.
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$COIN Joins S&P 500, but Coinbase Isn't Celebrating
On May 13, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Coinbase would officially replace Discover Financial Services in the S&P 500 on May 19. While other companies like Block and MicroStrategy, closely tied to Bitcoin, were already part of the S&P 500, Coinbase became the first cryptocurrency exchange whose primary business is in the index. This also signifies that cryptocurrency is gradually moving from the fringes to the mainstream in the U.S.
On the day of the announcement, Coinbase's stock price surged by 23%, surpassing the $250 mark. However, just 3 days later, Coinbase was hit by two consecutive events: a hack where employees were bribed to steal customer data and a demand for a $20 million ransom, and an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into the authenticity of its claim of having over 100 million "verified users" in its securities filings and marketing materials. These two events acted as mini-bombs, and at the time of writing, Coinbase's stock had already dropped by over 7.3%.
Coincidentally, Discover Financial Services, being replaced by Coinbase, can also be considered the "Coinbase" of the previous payment era. Discover is a U.S.-based digital banking and payment services company headquartered in Illinois, founded in 1960. Its payment network, Discover Network, is the fourth largest payment network apart from Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.
In April, after the approval of the acquisition of Discover by the sixth-largest U.S. bank, Capital One, this well-established digital banking company of over 60 years smoothly handed over its S&P 500 "seat" to this emerging cryptocurrency "bank." This unexpected coincidence also portrayed the handover between the new and old eras in Coinbase's entry into the S&P 500, resembling a relay race scene. However, this relay baton also brought Coinbase's accumulated "external troubles and internal strife" to a tipping point.
Over the past decade, cryptocurrency exchanges have been the most stable "profit machines." They play a role in providing liquidity to the entire industry and rely on trading fees to sustain their operations. However, with the comprehensive rollout of ETF products in the U.S. market, this profit model is facing unprecedented challenges. As the leader in the "American stack," with over 80% of its business coming from the U.S., Coinbase is most affected by this.
Starting from the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, traditional financial capital has significantly onboarded users and funds that originally belonged to exchanges in a more cost-effective, compliant, and transparent manner. The transaction fee revenue of cryptocurrency exchanges has started to decline, and this trend may further intensify in the coming months.
According to Coinbase's 2024 Q4 financial report, the platform's total trading revenue was $417 million, a 45% year-on-year decrease. The contribution of BTC and ETH's trading revenue dropped from 65% in the same period last year to less than 50%.
This decline is not a result of a decrease in market enthusiasm. In fact, since the approval of the Bitcoin ETF in January 2024, the inflow of BTC into the U.S. market has continued to reach new highs, with asset management giants like BlackRock and Fidelity rapidly expanding their management scale. Data shows that BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) alone has surpassed $17 billion in assets under management. As of mid-May 2025, the cumulative net inflow of 11 major institutional Bitcoin spot ETFs on the market has exceeded $41.5 billion, with a total net asset value of $1214.69 billion, accounting for approximately 5.91% of the total Bitcoin market capitalization.
Institutional investors and some retail investors are shifting towards ETF products, partly due to compliance and tax considerations. On one hand, ETFs have much lower trading costs compared to cryptocurrency exchanges. While Coinbase's spot trading fee rate varies annually in a tiered manner but averages around 1.49%, for example, the management fee for IBIT ETF is only 0.25%, and the majority of ETF institution fees fluctuate around 0.15% to 0.25%.
In other words, the more rational users are, the more likely they are to move from exchanges to ETF products, especially for investors aiming for long-term holdings.
According to multiple sources, several institutions, including VanEck and Grayscale, have submitted applications to the SEC for a Solana (SOL) ETF, with some institutions also planning to submit an XRP ETF proposal. Once approved, this may trigger a new round of fund migration. According to a report submitted by Coinbase to the SEC, as of April, the platform's trading revenue from XRP and Solana accounted for 18% and 10%, nearly one-third of the platform's fee revenue.
However, the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs passed in 2024 also reduced the fees for these two tokens on Coinbase from 30% and 15% to 26% and 10%, respectively. If the SOL and XRP ETFs are approved, it will further undermine the core fee revenue of exchanges like Coinbase.
The expansion of ETF products is gradually weakening the financial intermediary status of cryptocurrency exchanges. From their original roles as matchmakers and clearers to now gradually becoming mere "on-ramps and off-ramps" for funds, exchanges are seeing their marginal value squeezed by ETFs.
On May 12, 2025, SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins gave a keynote speech at the Tokenization and Cryptocurrency Working Group roundtable. The theme of his speech revolved around "It is a new day at the SEC," where he indicated that the SEC would not approach enforcement and regulation the same way as before but would instead pave the way for cryptocurrency assets in the U.S. market.
With signs of cryptocurrency compliance such as the SEC's "NEW DAY" declaration, an increasing number of traditional brokerages are attempting to enter the cryptocurrency industry. One of the most representative cases is the well-known U.S. brokerage Robinhood, which began expanding its crypto business in 2018. By the time of its IPO in 2021, Robinhood's crypto business revenue accounted for over 50% of the company, with a significant boost from the Dogecoin "moonshot" promoted by Musk.
In Q1 2025 earnings report, Robinhood showcased strong growth, especially in revenue from cryptocurrency and options trading. Fueled by Trump's Memecoin, cryptocurrency-related revenue reached $250 million, nearly doubling year-over-year. Consequently, Robinhood Gold subscription users reached 3.5 million, a 90% increase from the previous year, with the rapid growth of Robinhood Gold providing the company with a stable source of income.
Meanwhile, RobinHood is actively pursuing acquisitions in the cryptocurrency space. In 2024, it announced a $2 billion acquisition of the long-standing European cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp. Additionally, Canada's largest cryptocurrency CEX, WonderFi, which recently went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange, also announced its integration with RobinHood Crypto. After obtaining virtual asset licenses in the UK, Canada, Singapore, and other markets, RobinHood has taken a proactive approach in the compliant cryptocurrency trading market.
Furthermore, an increasing number of brokerage firms are exploring the same path. Futu Securities, Tiger Brokers, and others are also dipping their toes into cryptocurrency trading, with some having applied for or obtained the VA license from the Hong Kong SFC. Although their user bases are currently small, traditional brokerages have a natural advantage in user trust, regulatory licenses, and low fee structures. This could pose a threat to native cryptocurrency platforms in the future.
In April 2025, security researchers discovered that some Coinbase user data was leaked on the dark web. While the platform initially responded by attributing it to a "technical misinformation," it still raised concerns among users regarding its security and privacy protection. Just two days before Dow Jones Indexes announced Coinbase's addition to the S&P 500 Index, on May 11, 2025, Coinbase received an email from an unknown threat actor claiming to have obtained customer account information and internal documents, demanding a $20 million ransom to keep the data private. Subsequent investigations confirmed the data breach.
Cybercriminals obtained the data by bribing overseas customer service agents and support staff, mainly in "non-U.S. regions such as India." These agents abused their access to Coinbase's internal customer support system and stole customer data. As early as February this year, blockchain detective ZachXBT revealed on X platform that between December 2024 and January 2025, Coinbase users lost over $65 million to social engineering scams, with the actual amount potentially higher.
Among the victims was a well-known figure, 67-year-old Ed Suman, an established artist in the art world for nearly two decades, having been involved in the creation of artworks such as Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog" sculpture. Earlier this year, he fell victim to an impersonation scam involving fake Coinbase customer support, resulting in a loss of over $2 million in cryptocurrency. ZachXBT critiqued Coinbase for its inadequate handling of such scams, noting that other major exchanges have not faced similar issues and recommending Coinbase to enhance its security measures.
Amidst a series of ongoing social engineering incidents, although there has not been any impact on user assets at the technical level so far, it has raised concerns among many retail and institutional investors. Especially institutions holding massive assets on Coinbase. Just considering the U.S. BTC ETF institutions, as of mid-May 2025, they collectively hold nearly 840,000 BTC, and 75% of these are custodied by Coinbase. If we price BTC at $100,000, this amount reaches a staggering $63 billion, which is equivalent to the nominal GDP of two Iceland in the year 2024.
In addition, Coinbase Custody also serves over 300 institutional clients, including hedge funds, family offices, pension funds, and endowments. As of the Q1 2025 financial report, Coinbase's total assets under management (including institutional and retail clients) reached $404 billion. The specific amount of institutional custodied assets was not explicitly disclosed in the latest report, but it should still be over 50% based on the Q4 2024 report.
Once this security barrier is breached, not only could the rate of user attrition far exceed expectations, but more importantly, institutional trust in it would undermine the foundation of its business. Therefore, after a hacking event, Coinbase's stock price plummeted significantly.
Facing a decline in spot trading fee revenue, Coinbase is also accelerating its transformation, attempting to find growth opportunities in derivatives and emerging assets. Coinbase acquired a stake in the options platform Deribit at the end of 2024 and announced the official launch of perpetual contract products in 2025. This acquisition fills in Coinbase's gap in options trading and its relatively small global market share.
Deribit has a strong presence in non-U.S. markets, especially in Asia and Europe. The acquisition has enabled Coinbase to gain a dominant position in bitcoin and ethereum options trading on Deribit, accounting for approximately 80% of the global options trading volume, with daily trading volume remaining above $2 billion.
Meanwhile, 80-90% of Deribit's customer base consists of institutional investors, with their professionalism and liquidity in the Bitcoin and Ethereum options market highly favored by institutions. Coinbase's compliance advantage, coupled with its already robust institutional ecosystem, makes it even more suitable. By using institutions as an entry point, it can face the squeeze from giants like Binance and OKX in the derivatives market.
Facing a similar dilemma is Kraken, which is attempting to replicate Binance Futures' model in non-U.S. markets. Since the derivatives market relies more on professional users, fee rates are relatively higher and stickiness is stronger, making it a significant source of revenue for exchanges. In the first half of 2025, Kraken completed the acquisition of TradeStation Crypto and a futures exchange, aiming to build a complete derivatives trading ecosystem to hedge the risk of declining spot transaction fee income.
With the surge of Memecoin in 2024, Binance, OKX, and various CEX platforms began massively listing small-market-cap, highly volatile tokens to activate active trading users. Due to the wealth effect and trading activity of Memecoins, Coinbase was also forced to join the battle, successively listing popular tokens from the Solana ecosystem such as BOOK OF MEME and Dogwifhat. Although these coins are controversial, they are frequently traded, with fee rates several times higher than mainstream coins, serving as a "blood-boosting" method for spot trading.
However, due to its status as a publicly traded company, this practice is a riskier endeavor for Coinbase. Even in the current crypto-friendly environment, the SEC is still investigating whether tokens like SOL, ADA, and SAND constitute securities.
In addition to the forced transformation strategies carried out by the aforementioned CEXs, they are also starting to lay out RWAs and the most talked-about stablecoin payment fields, such as the PYUSD launched through a collaboration between Coinbase and Paypal, Coinbase's support for the Euro stablecoin EURC by Circle that complies with EU MiCA regulatory requirements, or the USD1 launched through a collaboration between Binance and WIFL. In the increasingly crowded trading field, many CEXs have shifted their focus from just the trading market to the application field.
The golden age of transaction fees has quietly ended, and the second half of the crypto exchange platform game has silently begun.
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After Surging 40%, Has Ethereum Price Peaked Upon Exiting the Craze?
Whether you are an insider or an outsider, these days you must be familiar with the news about Ethereum. The reason is simple, causing Ethereum enthusiasts to sigh with emotion and almost throwing off-guard those who defend Ethereum, Ethereum, with a "3-day surge of 40%," climbed to the top of the Douyin Hot List.
As we all know, Ethereum launched the Pectra upgrade on May 7th. This most significant network upgrade since early 2024 integrates the Prague execution layer hard fork and the Electra consensus layer upgrade, significantly improving Ethereum's performance through 11 improvement proposals. The account abstraction feature (EIP-7702) allows users to flexibly manage wallets through social media accounts or multi-signature schemes, reducing the user threshold, attracting more users and developers. The staking mechanism optimization increases the validator ETH cap from 32ETH to 2048ETH and introduces a flexible withdrawal method, making it easier for institutions and individuals to participate in network security, enhancing the market's confidence in Ethereum's long-term value.
At the same time, Pectra optimized the interaction efficiency of Layer 2 networks such as Arbitrum and Optimism, making transactions faster and cheaper, leading to a surge in on-chain activity. As a crucial step for Ethereum's transition from "2G" to "5G," the Pectra upgrade not only enhances network vitality but also "recharges confidence" in the market, directly driving the price increase.
Related Reading: "Ethereum Skyrockets 22% in One Day, E Enthusiasts Rejoice"
It's not just Ethereum itself, as Wall Street also brought important bullish news.
The world's largest asset management company, BlackRock, proposed to the SEC allowing Ethereum ETFs for staking. This proposal is expected to elevate Ethereum ETFs from a mere investment tool to a bond-like "interest-bearing asset," bringing investors both capital appreciation and passive income, igniting market optimism about Ethereum's future potential.
Specifically, BlackRock has proposed to amend its S-1 filing to allow investors to create and redeem ETF shares directly with Ethereum instead of the U.S. dollar (i.e., in-kind redemption). This move, combined with its $2.9 billion BUIDL Fund launched in March 2024, aims to deepen the integration of traditional finance with blockchain. The BUIDL Fund is a tokenized fund operating on the Ethereum network, investing in traditional assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds. This setup is highly attractive to institutional investors, as they can not only benefit from Ethereum's price appreciation but also earn stable cash flow through staking.
Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock's Head of Digital Assets, stated in a CNBC interview in March 2025 that the addition of staking functionality will significantly enhance the appeal of the Ethereum ETF. He admitted that when the Ethereum spot ETF was launched in July 2024 without staking functionality, the market demand was lackluster, and staking could be the key to reversing this trend.
Meanwhile, the SEC's shifting stance on cryptocurrency regulation has also fueled this upward trend. During the tenure of the previous SEC chairman, the regulatory approach was tough, and staking was strictly viewed through the Howey test as a potential unregistered security. Therefore, when approving the Ethereum spot ETF in May 2024, staking functionality was explicitly prohibited.
However, with Trump back in the White House and Paul Atkins taking over the SEC, there has been a noticeable relaxation in crypto regulation. Apart from BlackRock, ETF issuers such as Invesco Galaxy, VanEck, WisdomTree, and 21Shares have also submitted applications for similar staking and in-kind redemption.
Related reading: "New Chairman Takes Office, SEC Transforms into 'Crypto Daddy' Within 48 Hours"
If staking ETFs are approved, the benefits are likely to go beyond price appreciation. The introduction of staking functionality could redefine the role of crypto assets, making them more similar to traditional financial products that provide returns and value appreciation, thereby driving Ethereum closer to mainstream finance.
Currently, the SEC still needs to address several decisions related to crypto ETFs, including whether to approve ETFs for Solana, XRP, Litecoin, and even Dogecoin. With the calls for an "altcoin season" growing louder, Ethereum's strong performance may just be the beginning of a larger crypto market frenzy.
In addition, the Trump family-related DeFi project WLFI is also bullish on this wave of rise, with frequent on-chain activities. According to on-chain data analyst @ai_9684xtpa's monitoring, a WLFI-related address is currently borrowing coins to go long on ETH, borrowing 4 million U from Aave to buy 1590 ETH at an average price of $2515 per ETH.
For this epic surge of Ethereum after half a year of silence, the community has indeed gained more confidence and hope, which has also led to a revival of the entire altcoin market. However, amidst the joy, there are also voices of pessimism. Below is a summary conducted by BlockBeats based on community discussions.
The optimists point out that the current market structure is similar to the eve of the bull markets in 2016 and 2020, predicting a life-changing surge in the next 3-6 months, where some altcoins may even achieve astonishing single-day gains of up to 40%.
@liuwei16602825 stated that this surge signifies the return of the bull market as a sure thing. There is no need to worry about a pullback. The driving force behind the surge uses a high-cost isolated operation, fearing a drop more than any retail investor and will definitely do everything to support the price.
Related Reading: "Ethereum Leads the Surge Triggering the 'Altcoin Season' Speculation, How Do Traders View the Future Market?"
The bears mainly believe that this surge is different from the bull market of 2021, as the current market lacks the confidence of large-scale retail investors entering and holding positions for the long term, with funds rotating too quickly.
@market_beggar observed that a Bitfinex E/B whale has started to close positions and believes that if this whale maintains its high-speed position-closing operation for the next few days, it can be inferred that the whale no longer sees the upside potential of ETH, preparing to take profits and exit. The closing time will be a key focus going forward.
@FLS_OTC stated that there are still many uncertainties at the macro level, and the liquidity cannot support a major bull market. At this stage, it is a "last hurrah," not a complete reversal, and will continue to remain in a short position.
@off_thetarget believes that after ETH transitioned from POW to POS, it lost the "gold standard" of mining machine power cost support. The staking economic model led to a breakdown in value anchoring. Additionally, the L2 ecosystem (such as Starknet, zkSync, etc.) suffered from liquidity fragmentation, failing to establish an effective capital inflow mechanism, causing the collapse of the split disc pattern. Furthermore, the ETH community's excessive pursuit of technical narratives divorced from real-world needs resulted in a weak ecosystem growth. Therefore, he believes that ETH's intrinsic value system has crumbled, and the price is bound to plummet to the 800-1200 range, with a decisive short position at 1800.
@Airdrop_Guard, based on the core logic of the "High Probability Trading Strategy," where three sets of underlying logic different trading systems (such as volume depletion, price supply-demand, long/short position funding rate, etc.) simultaneously issue a short signal at the same point (2580), creating a high-probability trading opportunity. He emphasizes that these systems must be based on different algorithms and logics (rather than mere technical indicator overlays). The current ETH trend aligns with the short conditions in multiple independent dimensions of his trading system, hence the decision to short.
Overall, Bitcoin still maintains over 54% market dominance, and institutional funds' continued preference for it may limit the altcoin's upward potential. The market's future direction will depend on multiple factors, such as Bitcoin's price trend, global macroeconomic conditions, and whether funds can effectively rotate from Bitcoin to the altcoin sector.
Although Ethereum's recent leadership in the market has brought about optimistic sentiment, investors still need to remain rational as different sectors of altcoins are likely to show divergence in trends. Whether this round of Ethereum's rise will usher in a true altcoin frenzy may require more time and conducive conditions.