Welcome to the September edition of our Institutional Ethereum Update. 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: $2,410.90 (+28.1%)
Ethereum market cap: $294.34B (+29.57%)
Ethereum staked: $108.93B (+37.97%)
Stablecoin market cap: $160.25B (+2.41%)
Ethereum RWAs total value: $17.35B (-0.80%)
The metrics are accurate at the time of publication. The percentage change is over a 30-day period.
Institutional Adoption
Securitize and Neuberger Berman launched the Neuberger Securitize High Current Income Tokenized Fund (HINC) on Ethereum. The fund adds a credit-focused option to the growing lineup of tokenized fixed-income products on Ethereum, following a wave of money-market and treasury funds from BlackRock and JPMorgan.
Revolut is launching EURR, its first euro-pegged stablecoin, on Ethereum. Phased testing is starting this month with eligible customers in Denmark, Poland and Portugal.
A broader EEA rollout and additional currency-pegged stablecoins are already in development.
The Ethereum Foundation issued a report on the gas repricing impact of the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade. The upgrade’s two gas pricing changes (EIP-8037 and EIP-8038) raise the cost to read and write onchain data, aligning fees more closely with the network's actual computational load.
Some smart contracts may be affected by these changes, so the EF has published a lookup tool for developers to check specific contract addresses and make changes before the upgrade. Regular users will be unaffected.
A Big Move We’re Watching
Lido supports new validator operating standard
Lido DAO has funded the development of ValOS (Validator Operations Standard), a new framework that aims to give node operators a shared set of principles, controls, and governance processes for managing operational risk.
ValOS builds on Lido's earlier DUCK initiative, which produced a practical risk framework, a library of mitigation controls, and a communications toolkit for nodes dealing with operational issues. ValOS adds governance on top of that framework, aiming to build an assurance standard that can support independent audits and industry-wide benchmarking.
To get the project off the ground, Lido is committing $60,000 to a new grant pool covering up to half the cost of assurance reviews for early adopters.
Ethereum's security ultimately rests on the collective reliability of its validator set. As pension funds, asset managers and other regulated players get comfortable staking ETH, they may look for a way to evaluate operator risk. Lido DAO thinks an auditable standard like ValOS is the kind of infrastructure that could encourage institutional investors to become more involved with Ethereum’s staking ecosystem.
A Chart Worth Checking Out
The total dollar value of staked ETH grew 38% over the past 30 days to $108.93 billion, up 24% over the past 3 months. Much of this growth can be attributed to the rise in the price of ETH which grew 28.1% over the past 30 days to $2,410.90, though continued accumulation from institutional investors, including Bitmine, also led to an increase in the staking value.
Ethereum Developments
The Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol Cluster, the organization’s protocol scaling and improvement group, released two reports covering upcoming Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and making changes to the group’s roadmap.
The first report is a community-sourced tier list grading all 62 EIPs proposed for the upcoming Hegotá upgrade.
The second is a broader priorities document outlining the cluster's research commitments, including a goal of making Ethereum quantum-resistant by December 2029.
The Ethereum Foundation will be sponsoring a Workshop on Privacy-Preserving Technologies (WPPT 2026), which will be held as an affiliated event of Asiacrypt 2026 in Hong Kong this December.
The call for presentations invites short abstracts (3 pages or less, due September 25) on work spanning zero-knowledge proofs, MPC, FHE, private identity, and deployed blockchain privacy systems, across five topic tracks.
Qivalis, a consortium of 37 European banks spanning 15 countries, is building and issuing its euro-backed stablecoin on Ethereum.
Harmony plans to sunset its network and migrate its native $ONE token to Ethereum.
Validators can wind down operations from September 10, 2026, and there is a one-time $1.4 million compensation pool for those who sign on as "governors."
Trezor launched Clear Signing, a firmware feature that decodes Ethereum and EVM smart contract transactions into plain-language descriptions.
Previously, users would sign a long hashed message, which made it difficult to understand the contents of a transaction.
The feature relies on the open ERC-7730 standard and works automatically across Trezor Suite, WalletConnect and Trezor Connect, with major protocols like Aave, Lido, 1inch, and Hyperliquid supported at launch.
This is the Institutional Ethereum Update: September 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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