Data & Insights: ETH Staked Hits New Highs; People Are Using Avalanche Again

A Lot At Stake

• The percentage of total ETH supply staked is now back near its all-time high, standing at 28.69% as of Sunday, 15 June 2025
  • This figure is roughly equal to the previous all-time high of 28.71% last seen on 10 November 2024
  • Following a multi-month decline after November, this figure had dipped as low as 27.22% in March 2025, which coincided almost exactly with the Dencun upgrade going live.
• Meanwhile, the Ethereum validator entry queue has exploded, jumping from 12.7K at the end of May 2025 to over 397K validators just three weeks later, the longest line since May 2024.
  • A potential driver for this is speculation around a spot ETH staking ETF, with potential issuers seeding validators early
• Unlike the spot ETH ETFs that were listed last August, ETH staking ETFs would have the underlying coins sit inside an actively participating validator rather than idle in cold storage.
  • This arrangement means a fund would earn Ethereum’s consensus yield and pass most of those rewards through to shareholders, either by paying cash distributions or by automatically reinvesting the additional ETH, while skimming a small slice to cover management fees
  • In effect, the product would behave less like a simple price tracker and more like a short-duration, floating-rate bond whose coupon is paid in ETH.
  • Several issuers have already angled for that upgrade, as Grayscale and 21Shares have both amended their S-1 filings to let the trust’s custodian delegate deposits to a white-listed validator set
• If approval does come, the flow impact alone would push the staked-share supply above the 30% threshold.
  • Meanwhile, a larger or faster wave of inflows could tighten free float even more, amplifying upside reflexivity whenever spot demand increases.

Into The Arena

• Avalanche has experienced an on-chain boom in recent weeks, as the 7-day moving average (7DMA) of the number of transactions on the chain reached 1 million, its highest in over a year.
  • For context, at the beginning of May 2025, this figure stood at just 296K transactions.
  • In the span of less than two weeks, this figure more than doubled to 696K, before a notable decline and slowdown towards the end of the month.
  • However, as June approached, transactions on Avalanche exploded, with the 7DMA increasing from 400K on 31 May to over 1 million in just two weeks.
  • The increased activity is reflected in the 7DMA of the average transaction fee on the chain, as it has doubled from 0.0035 AVAX at the beginning of May 2025 to 0.0072 AVAX at the time of writing.
• However, interestingly, the 7DMA of the number of active addresses on Avalanche experienced a notable spike in May, as it grew from 40K to 296K in the first half of May 2025.
  • This caused Avalanche to record its highest ever monthly figure for active addresses, totalling 3.6M for the month of May, which is 16.5% higher than the previous monthly high of 3.09M in December 2021.
  • However, since this early May spike, it has declined significantly, sitting at just 68K at the time of writing. 
• Considering the spike in the number of transactions in June that was not followed by a similar spike in active addresses, it can be assumed that the spike in transactions that occurred in June has been driven by a smaller cohort transacting more frequently rather than by a fresh influx of wallets.
  • Regardless, the spike in activity was likely catalyzed by arena.trade, a launchpad that allows users to mint tradeable ERC–404–style tokens directly from X posts using a bonding-curve mechanism.
  • Each interaction, whether issuing or trading a token, triggers a sequence of micro-transactions, creating a cascade of fee-generating activity that has mechanically inflated Avalanche’s daily transaction count throughout June.

Lending a Hand

• Total value locked (TVL) in lending protocols is at an all-time high of over $55.69 billion, having surpassed its previous peaks set in 2021, 2022 and late-2024.
• Aave v3, in particular, has been a major contributor to this surge, hitting a new all-time high of $26.09 billion in TVL last week.
  • Just two months earlier, at the start of April 2025, Aave v3’s TVL stood at $16.87 billion, marking a 55% increase in just two months.
  • Compared to the beginning of 2025, when TVL was $19.72 billion, Aave v3 is now up over 32% year-to-date (YTD).
  • For the month of April 2025, Aave averaged roughly $900K per day in fees generated. This figure has grown to a daily average of roughly $1.6 million in June, signalling positive growth in terms of protocol fee generation.
  • Over the past three months, the AAVE token itself is up over 65%, significantly outperforming BTC, which is up just 26% in the same time period.
• This growth trend isn't isolated to Aave. Other lending protocols, notably Morpho Blue and Maple Finance, have also recorded strong momentum in recent months:
  • Morpho Blue currently holds $3.9 billion in TVL, representing a 38% YTD increase.
  • Maple Finance has surged even faster, with TVL now at $1.37 billion, up 417% YTD.
  • On the token front, MORPHO is up 12% over the past three months, while SYRUP, Maple’s native token that TGE’d in May 2025, has rallied by over 140% since launch.
• Maple Finance, in particular, has gained traction due to its expansion into under-collateralised real-world asset (RWA) lending.
  • Its “sovereign pool” framework enables any delegate to originate credit lines provided they can verify borrower underwriting data on-chain.
  • This innovation has allowed Maple to diversify beyond its original crypto market-maker clientele.
  • More broadly, this also aligns with the rise of tokenised finance, where traditional credit desks that can’t hold spot crypto can still participate by purchasing tokenised notes, funnelling capital into DeFi rails.

People are Trading Bitcoin...

• A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the ratio between Bitcoin ETFs and spot Bitcoin volumes. The discussion was interesting, so we made a chart for it! Bitcoin spot ETFs have continued to provide investors with access to the world's largest cryptocurrency.
  • These products now account for 25% of total Bitcoin spot market volume. This represents a substantial shift from just 10% in October 2024, highlighting how quickly traditional finance infrastructure has captured market share from native crypto trading venues.
• The ratio peaked at nearly 30% approximately two weeks ago before settling at current levels, demonstrating the significant appetite for regulated Bitcoin exposure among both institutional and retail investors.
  • This 25% figure encompasses all Bitcoin spot trading activity, whether BTC serves as the base or quote currency, providing a comprehensive view of ETF market penetration. 
• Bitcoin spot ETFs have emerged as some of the most successful ETF launches in financial history, attracting billions in assets under management within their first year of trading.
  • The appeal stems largely from eliminating the operational complexities that have traditionally deterred investors from direct Bitcoin ownership, such as secure custody solutions, private key management, and the technical knowledge required to interact with crypto exchanges. 
  • For institutional investors, ETFs provide familiar regulatory frameworks, established settlement processes, and the ability to hold Bitcoin exposure within existing brokerage accounts alongside traditional assets.
• Several factors continue to drive preference for ETF-based Bitcoin exposure over spot market trading.
  • Tax reporting simplification represents another significant advantage, as ETF holdings integrate seamlessly with existing portfolio management and accounting systems. 
  • The elimination of counterparty risk associated with cryptocurrency exchanges, particularly given the industry's history of high-profile failures, makes ETFs attractive for larger allocations.

...But is Anyone using Bitcoin?

• Bitcoin's transaction activity has reached its quietest period in over a year and a half, with the 7-day moving average falling to 316,000 transactions last week before recovering slightly to around 350,000 currently.
  • This represents a dramatic decline from the network's peak activity of over 700,000 daily transactions observed during the height of Bitcoin-based protocol adoption in mid-2024.
• The sharp downturn reflects the cooling of speculative activity around Bitcoin-native protocols like Runes and Ordinals, which previously drove substantial transaction volume through token-like functionality and NFT-style inscriptions.
  • These protocols, which brought Ethereum-style applications to Bitcoin, have largely faded from mainstream attention as trader interest migrated to other blockchain ecosystems offering more native support for such activities.
  • Transaction fees have remained consistently below $1.50 since the start of the year, indicating minimal competition for block space and a return to Bitcoin's traditional monetary transfer use cases.
• The reduced activity has created an unexpected technical situation where some users are attempting to transact below Bitcoin Core's default relay floor of 1 satoshi per virtual byte (sat/vB).
  • Mining pool MARA has begun operating a "Slipstream" pipeline specifically designed to process these non-standard, ultra-low-fee transactions that typical Bitcoin nodes would reject.
  • This development has sparked debate within the Bitcoin development community about network standards and censorship resistance, with some arguing that filtering low-fee transactions contradicts Bitcoin's fundamental principles.