thedefiant.io
Everstake, a crypto staking provider, said in a new report that 2025 was a “year of sharp contrasts” for Ethereum, filled with major network upgrades and rising institutional adoption even as the price of ETH remained relatively flat.
In its Ethereum Staking Insights & Protocol Analysis report, Everstake said total value staked reached about 36.08 million ETH, or roughly 29.3% of supply, with net growth of more than 1.8 million ETH. As of Tuesday, Jan. 27, about 36.5 million ETH is staked – roughly 30.26% of supply, according to Coinbase data.
The report also highlighted continued growth in network activity, with Ethereum Layer 1 (L1) transactions rising about 30% over the year to around 1.5-1.6 million per day, while Layer 2 throughput surpassed roughly 300-330 transactions per second (TPS).
The findings underscore that Ethereum has continued to scale and attract larger players despite ETH’s underperformance. Currently, Ethereum’s total value locked (TVL) stands at nearly $72 billion, while Ether is changing hands at $2,930, up 4% on the day, but down 10% over the year.
Everstake said the Layer 1 is increasingly being used as a settlement layer, while most day-to-day activity has shifted to Layer 2. The findings pointed to protocol upgrades, including Pectra, which introduced EIP-7251 to raise the maximum effective validator balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, allowing large stakers to consolidate validators.
It also highlighted Fusaka, which activated PeerDAS (EIP-7594), a>
The report also flagged risks tied to validator software concentration, citing a Prysm client outage in December 2025. That outage caused validator participation to drop to around 75%, with 248 blocks missed.
“While the risk is real, Ethereum still maintains more independent client implementations than most L1s (Bitcoin >90% Core; Solana historically relied on a single client until Firedancer),” the report reads. “Ethereum boasts diversity on both layers (EL: Geth, Nethermind, Besu, Reth; CL: Lighthouse, Prysm, Teku, Lodestar). That said, practical market share remains concentrated (e.g., Geth ≈47% EL, Lighthouse ≈48% CL), preserving the risk of systemic impact from bugs in popular clients.”
Looking ahead, Everstake said staking is becoming more complex as more institutional players enter the market and competition for liquidity and yield intensifies.