Every month, we dive deep into how institutions are interacting with Ethereum, what’s happening onchain, which firms are adopting the technology, and more.
New here? Subscribe to get updates straight to your inbox.
Ethereum x Institutional Stats
Ethereum price: $2,408.01 (-12.1%)
Ethereum market cap: $293.99B (-12.1%)
Ethereum staked: $106.92B (-10.12%)
Stablecoin market cap: $146.97B (-1.59%)
Ethereum RWAs total value: $16.38B (-1.89%)
The metrics are accurate at the time of publication. The percentage change is over a 30-day period.
Institutional Adoption
Nethermind and SMBC Nikko have partnered with Uniswap Labs, Coinbase (Base) and the Nyx Foundation to offer institutional DeFi products in Japan.
The partnership aims to offer agentic vaults, asset deployment strategies for digital assets, and an open framework for liquidity pools built with Uniswap V4.
The project is expected to be completed by mid-2027, at which point the progress will be shared with Japanese regulators for approval.
Bitmine will stop buying ETH once it controls 5% of the total supply, with its current supply sitting at 4.9%. The company has been buying ETH every week since June 2025.
The Blockspace Forum, a coalition of Ethereum builders, relays and validators, has launched multi-party block construction (MPBC) on Ethereum mainnet. The mechanism lets blocks include transactions from several builders
The upgrade is expected to speed up transaction inclusion, strengthen censorship resistance, and give smaller builders a way to earn fees without winning entire blocks.
At launch, the feature covers more than 85% of the transaction pipeline, and about 90% of connected validators.
The initial version will allow the addition of simple transactions, such as transfers and blobs, to the winning block, and requires no changes from proposers or users.
The coalition includes Lido, Kraken, ether.fi, SharpLink, BTCS, and Ethereum Institutional.
A Use Case We’re Watching
Ethereum may be getting faster
Ethlabs has published a case for EIP-8198 (“Quick Slots”), a proposal to cut Ethereum’s block time from 12 seconds to 10 seconds as part of the upcoming Hegotá upgrade. The report draws on inputs from 20 DeFi founders, app developers and infrastructure researchers.
The EIP, presented to Ethereum’s core developers in August, has since picked up support from organizations such as Lido, Ethena, Ondo, Titan Builder, and Ethereum Institutional.
As tokenized stocks, ETFs, and other institutional products begin using Ethereum, reducing the time it takes to settle transactions becomes important, as intra-block price fluctuations can have a major impact on institutional flows.
The proposal’s supporters argue that faster blocks would tighten onchain pricing, improve execution for traders and liquidity providers, and strengthen censorship resistance without sacrificing the decentralization that makes Ethereum attractive as a settlement layer.
The proposal has two parts: a one-time overhaul that removes the fixed 12-second assumption from Ethereum’s client software, and a gradual reduction in block times — each cut will need to be tested and agreed upon independently.
The approach mirrors how Ethereum already raises gas limits and blob capacity, splitting the work into steps as the network grows capable of handling more.
Work on the proposal is already underway. Contributors have drafted a consensus specification covering the timing changes and the upgrade transition. An analysis by Sourcify found that only about 0.27% of mainnet contracts may need to be migrated. A Flashbots review also found that shorter slots at the levels being discussed are unlikely to push validators toward geographic centralization.
Chart of the Month
Source: Token Terminal
Ethereum Developments
VanEck filed a request with the SEC to withdraw its staked ETH ETF proposal.
The withdrawal comes almost a year after the ETF proposal was submitted with VanEck simply stating that it “does not intend to proceed with the planned distribution of the Trust's shares”. No other reasoning was given for the withdrawal.
The ETF, which would have held Lido’s stETH instead, had yet to issue shares and thus requires no redemptions or investment refunds upon the closing of the proposal.
Optimum launched mump2p, a high-performance data propagation protocol that speeds up how blocks travel between Ethereum validators, on Ethereum mainnet. The protocol is reportedly 3.3x faster than Ethereum’s standard networking layer, and is already being used by 16 node operators, including Blockdaemon, Everstake, and all ether.fi validators, representing $3.4 billion in staked ETH.
Charles Schwab is rolling out direct ETH trading, allowing its customers to buy, sell and bring move ETH directly on their platform.
Interactive Brokers, in partnership with Zerohash, launched ETH staking for eligible clients.
Ethereum Institutional said it will be relaunching its invite-only Ethereum Institutional Forum, a series of events aimed at senior finance executives and Ethereum ecosystem leaders.
This will be the third edition of the event, and will take place in London on November 12, bringing together banks, asset managers and market infrastructure providers alongside Ethereum researchers.
Soneium, a Sony-backed Ethereum layer 2, plans to support ERC-8432, a draft standard that defines a common onchain interface for registering IP and license terms.
The feature would let independent registries identify IP assets, publish license terms that both people and AI agents can read, and record and verify license agreements onchain.
Ownership of tokenized IP is already onchain, but usage rights are still recorded in offchain contracts that AI agents can’t access.
Soneium wants builders to review the draft before payment and royalty extensions are added.
OKXICE, a joint venture between Intercontinental Exchange and crypto exchange OKX, has notified the SEC that it plans to launch a tokenized securities venue under the regulator’s temporary Innovation Exemption.
The venue would offer retail and institutional investors round-the-clock secondary trading in tokenized U.S. stocks through Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on X Layer, OKX’s Ethereum layer 2.
Trading would be limited to verified participants through KYC checks, sanctions screening, and wallet-bound credentials.
Baillie Gifford has opened its Enhanced Yield Fund ($BAGEY), a managed short-duration bond fund issued entirely onchain.
Investors can subscribe and redeem their capital in USDC or fiat (with a $100 minimum) through Anchorage, Archax and BitGo.
The fund is currently limited to professional investors in the U.K., Switzerland, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands.
ARK Invest has launched a tokenized share class of its $1.3 billion ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX) on Ethereum, with Securitize providing the issuance infrastructure.
ARKVX is a managed interval fund that holds tokenized shares of both private and public companies, including SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks.
Eligible investors can buy in from a $500 minimum.
Deutsche Bank is adding ETH and BTC, and some stablecoins to its institutional custody service for German clients. The launch is slated for later this year, pending regulatory approval.
Matter Labs, the team behind ZKsync, has open-sourced the permissioning engine of Prividium, its institutional blockchain platform.
Germany’s central bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, is the first institution to deploy Prividium on its own infrastructure
The bank would keep smart contract and token data inside its own environment, and work with Matter Labs on design and testing.
The open-source release lets any institution run a permissioned chain from public code without a commercial agreement, but administration tools and system integrations remain paid offerings.
This is the Institutional Ethereum Update: October Edition.
Hit reply and let us know how we did! What was your favorite part of the newsletter? Our founder reads every response.
This product was built by StrataMedia.
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.
To get this newsletter delivered to your inbox, subscribe here.
