Ethereum Ecological Outlook: Upgrading from Pectra to NFT Market Renewal

According to Forbes, the total market value of global crypto assets will soar to a record high of US$3.8 trillion in 2024. Among them, the unit price of BTC hit a historical peak of US$106,490.1 on December 17, 2024. Various Meme Coins took the lead. With the progress and conclusion of the US presidential election, they became the absolute focus of the market, and the Ethereum ecosystem has also experienced extraordinary changes. It has been a wonderful year. Not only has the Dencun upgrade been successfully completed, but ETH has also achieved an increase in market value of approximately 48%.

Looking forward to 2025, what events in the Ethereum ecosystem are worthy of users' attention?

Pectra upgrade

The Ethereum Pectra upgrade is expected to be officially activated in the first quarter of 2025. The Ethereum improved protocols to be implemented in this round of upgrades include:

• EIP-2537: Precompile for BLS12-381 curve operations

• EIP-2935: Provide historical block hashes in status

• EIP-6110: Provide validator deposits on-chain

• EIP-7002: Assets triggerable by the execution layer

• EIP-7549: Move committee index out of verifying signatures

• EIP-7594: PeerDAS

• EIP-7685: Generic execution layer requests

• EIP-7251: Increase MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE

• EIP-7702: Set EOA account code for a transaction

• EIP-7623: Increase call data charges

• EOF-related technical agreements

As early as November 2023, developers have begun deploying the Ethereum Pectra upgrade. Initially, in the developers' imagination, this was just a small upgrade that could be completed at the same time as the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, but there were many technical protocols that were not agreed upon at that time, so it was not implemented.

According to public information on the Internet, Gaia Regis, co-founder and CEO of Byzantine, once said: The Pectra upgrade will fundamentally change the way the Ethereum security layer operates .

After the Pectra upgrade is completed, developers have agreed that Verkle Transition is the next key reform area for Ethereum.

What is Verkle Transition?

Verkle Transition is a major reform of the Ethereum state data structure. It refers to the developer's plan to transfer all state data from the Merkle Patricia Tree structure to the Verkle structure, which will be able to generate smaller state data proofs for nodes, thus improving node efficiency. , especially suitable for the operation of lightweight nodes, which can reduce maintenance costs.

DeFi

On December 23, 2024, Uniswap officially announced that its Layer 2 solution Unichain is expected to be launched on the public mainnet in early 2025. This may be the opening event of the Ethereum ecological DeFi field in 2025.

Unichain is an infrastructure focused on decentralized finance (DeFi), built on OP Stack and running on Ethereum's Sepolia test network. Since its launch in October 2024, the Sepolia testnet has processed more than 50 million transactions and deployed more than 4 million test contracts.

RWA

Decentralized real-world assets (hereinafter referred to as RWA) will release liquidity, especially in the fields of real estate and carbon credits, and may lead to new explorations in the field of copyrighted works.

According to data from RWA.xyz, as of December 24, 2024, RWA has reached a total asset lockup of approximately US$14.9 billion, with more than 80,000 asset holders.

Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise, pointed out in the latest weekly report released on December 18, 2024: Ethereum will usher in a strong rebound in 2025, with the biggest driving force coming from RWA. Relevant data shows that in the current RWA market, RWA on Ethereum accounts for 81%, which is in a dominant position.

Stablecoin

An article published by Forbes on December 23, 2024 stated: Stablecoin has become one of the most successful use cases in the field of crypto assets, relying on blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, and Tron to facilitate cross- chain transactions.

In 2024, the circulating supply of Stablecoin will reach 200 billion, and it is expected that the circulating supply may continue to grow in 2025, exceeding 400 billion.

NFT

On December 22, 2024, an article published by cointribune., a Web3 media platform, stated that the weekly sales volume of Ethereum-based NFTs reached an astonishing US$304 million, an increase of 76% compared to the previous week’s sales volume. NFT sales on Ethereum accounted for 66% of the total NFT sales that week. In particular, the popularity of some well-known NFT series continues to increase, such as the Azuki element series of NFTs. Sales volume increased by 226% compared to the previous week.

As 2024 draws to a close, the sudden rise in Ethereum NFT sales seems to indicate possible market vitality in 2025. Perhaps, with the promotion of more emerging use cases, some media pointed out: ETH is expected to hit a new value of $15,000 in May 2025. Let us look forward to it together!