Every month, we dive deep into how institutions are interacting with Ethereum, what’s happening onchain, which firms are adopting the technology, and more.
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Ethereum x Institutional Stats
Ethereum price: $2,102.14 (-10.1%)
Ethereum market cap: $254.11B (-0.8%)
Ethereum staked: $82.6B (-9.3%)
Stablecoin TVL (across Ethereum & L2s): $186.64B (-1.06%)
Ethereum RWAs total value: $20.8B (+18.2%)
The metrics are accurate at the time of publication. The percentage change is over a 30-day period.
Institutional Adoption
The Ethereum Foundation’s upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, expected in Q3 2026, will raise Ethereum’s gas limit from roughly 60 million to 200 million, more than tripling the amount of computation the network can process per block. It also named new leadership for its Protocol team, a research and development lab within the broader Ethereum Foundation. Coming on to replace the three co-leads that are stepping down (Barnabe Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Alex Stokes) are Will Corcoran, a Research Coordinator at Protocol, Kev Wedderburn, head of the zkEVM team, and Fredrik, the Foundation’s Protocol Security lead.
BlackRock has filed to launch a new tokenized Treasury reserve fund in partnership with Securitize. The asset manager also filed to add an onchain share class for its $7 billion Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund, which has BNY Mellon maintaining the shareholder registry on Ethereum. The filings, which extend BlackRock’s tokenization strategy beyond its $2.5B BUIDL fund, come as the broader tokenized real-world asset market’s value has tripled to more than $30 billion over the past year.
EigenCloud has unveiled EigenCompute, a verifiable execution layer built with Intel and Google Cloud. The program lets developers run AI agents and other offchain applications inside hardware-secured environments. These environments can produce cryptographic proof of every action an agent takes, letting developers verify execution, and inspect identity, builds, and upgrades. The product targets a growing pain point as autonomous agents take on higher-stakes tasks like moving capital or executing trading strategies, where users currently have to trust the developer’s word that an agent is behaving as promised.
A Big Move We’re Watching: Bitmine Approaches 5% of ETH Supply
Bitmine Immersion Technologies this week said it has increased the size of its corporate ETH treasury to 5.3 million ETH (about $11.28 billion USD), roughly 4.37% of the total circulating ETH supply as of May 19. Over the past week, the company added 71,672 ETH to its balance sheet.
Tom Lee, the chairman of Bitmine, has stated previously that the firm’s goal is to accumulate 5% of the total ETH supply. Including cash reserves of $685 million and a separate set of non-ETH investments, Bitmine’s total balance sheet now stands at $12.6 billion.
The company has currently staked about 89% of its total holdings, 4.7 million ETH, which generates an estimated $289 million in annualized revenue. Bitmine projects that its annualized revenue could rise to $324 million annually once the entire position is staked through the Made in America Validator Network (MAVAN), Bitmine’s institutional staking platform.
Bitmine’s continued ETH accumulation has both positive and negative implications for the industry. On the one hand, it proves the validity of the corporate ETH treasury model, reinforcing the thesis that staked ETH can be a productive treasury asset.
However, the large concentration of ETH in one entity could affect market liquidity and introduce broader ecosystem risks. For example, a forced sale, strategic shift, or issues at Bitmine could negatively impact the price of ETH or other teams that rely on Bitmine’s infrastructure.
Additionally, a single staking platform, like Bitmine’s, accumulating a large share of validator activity raises questions about validator diversity and centralization.
For Bitmine, continued accumulation of ETH is essential to increasing its equity, since the firm’s value rises with the price of ETH.
A Chart Worth Checking Out
Ethereum attracted more RWA holders over the past 30 days, with RWA investors increasing 4.5% to 177,900.
However, total RWA transfer volume on the network declined 15.2% to $21.01 billion in the period, as investors pivoted to long-term holding strategies, coinciding with the decline in DEX volumes across Ethereum’s ecosystem.
Other Major Ethereum Developments
GameSquare, a gaming, lifestyle and analytics company, disclosed in its latest financial filing that it has a total of 15,502 ETH (worth about $32.6M), combining its holdings and via a treasury vehicle, and approximately $1.6M in other altcoins as of the end of March.
The Ethereum Foundation unstaked 21,271 ETH (worth about $49.66M) from Lido to fund protocol development and ecosystem grants, bringing its total staked position down to roughly 52,965 ETH. The move follows a similar $40M unstaking in April, and reflects routine treasury rebalancing rather than a directional view on ETH.
EtherFi CEO Mike Silagadze and SharpLink CEO Joe Chalom joined the Talking Tokens podcast to discuss how DeFi protocols should approach risk, and what institutions look for in a network when making deployment decisions. They also explained EtherFi’s updated risk framework and emergency “red button,” how SharpLink’s ETH treasury underwrites DeFi exposure, and why performative decentralization can make protocols less safe.
Julian Ma announced that he is leaving the Ethereum Foundation after four years, citing a desire to focus on building products that “build on the financial infrastructure that crypto is built on”. Ma’s tenure at the EF included leading market design research and go-to-market work on FOCIL and the Fast Confirmation Rule.
Tokenized U.S. Treasuries issued on Ethereum surpassed $8 billion in value for the first time, roughly doubling over the past six months.
U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $101.2M in net inflows on May 1, with BlackRock’s ETHA and Fidelity’s FETH accounting for over 90% of the day’s activity. The session saw an increase in institutional demand, indicating that investors considered ETH was undervalued at the $2,300 price point.
Coinbase selected Centrifuge, Ethereum-based tokenization protocol, as its preferred tokenization infrastructure. Centrifuge will serve as the default issuance layer for tokenized assets across Coinbase's ecosystem, including products on Base, with the first institutional assets expected to launch in the coming weeks.
JPMorgan filed to launch its second tokenized money market fund on Ethereum. The OnChain Liquidity-Token Money Market Fund will invest in U.S. Treasuries and overnight repurchase agreements.
This is the Institutional Ethereum Update: May Edition.
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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.
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