Bitwise analysts reveal a significant shift in Ethereum’s role, with institutions increasingly leveraging the network for institutional treasury flows and on-chain dollars. This marks a departure from its earlier focus on DeFi and NFTs. The analysis highlights that stablecoin transactions now account for the majority of activity on the blockchain, signifying a transition to a settlement layer for institutional capital. 2021-2022’s boom in NFT activity has largely migrated to Layer-2 solutions. Ethereum’s core developers have long predicted this evolution, with Eric Conner stating that the mainnet will eventually serve as a foundation for institutional needs and not a platform for everyday users seeking token transactions. This transformation aligns with recent developments like Pectra and PeerDAS/Fusaka, signifying an intentional shift towards supporting larger-scale infrastructure functions such as ETH transfers, regulated tokenized assets, and rollups and cross-chain bridges.