Author: Biteye Core Contributor viee

Editor: Biteye Core Contributor Denise

Recently, the price of ETH has approached historical highs, and institutional funds are accelerating their inflow.

Against this backdrop, several Ethereum ecosystem projects have released positive news. In this article, we have selected 12 Alpha projects to interpret their latest developments.????

01. BMNR

Under the leadership of Tom Lee, the US-listed company BitMine Immersion (NYSE: BMNR) has accumulated 1.2 million ETH, worth $5.03 billion, making it the largest ETH holder in the world. Additionally, the company plans to continue buying ETH, aiming to acquire 5% of the global ETH supply, and intends to use the ETH it holds for staking to earn returns. Therefore, BMNR is undoubtedly one of the strong vehicles betting on Ethereum.

BMNR's aggressive strategy has also attracted endorsements from Wall Street shareholders. Cathie Wood's ARK Invest invested approximately $182 million to acquire about 4.77 million shares of Bitmine, of which $177 million will be used to purchase Ethereum; well-known investor Bill Miller has also invested in BMNR, comparing it to ETH MicroStrategy; Peter Thiel's Founders Fund has also disclosed a 9.1% stake.

Benefiting from the rise in ETH prices, BMNR's stock price has recently continued to strengthen, nearly doubling since August.

02. Ethena

Recently, sentiment was ignited by Ethena's newly established department StablecoinX, which plans to repurchase $260 million worth of ENA within six weeks, accounting for 8% of the circulating supply, with real cash inflow every day. More importantly, the fee switch mechanism has been approved, and in the future, a portion of the protocol's revenue will be directly distributed to sENA holders. According to Tokenomist's scenario simulation, conservatively estimating, sENA's annualized yield could reach 4%, and in an optimistic scenario, it may even exceed 10%.

In addition to internal protocol benefits, at the beginning of June, Coinbase announced support for ENA and opened a USD trading pair, making it one of the few synthetic stablecoin projects to be listed. Meanwhile, the Ethena ecosystem continues to grow, collaborating with yield protocols like Pendle to embed USDe into more DeFi strategies, enhancing sticky yield rates.

In the long run, Ethena is expanding the Converge Chain and launching a compliant stablecoin USDtb, gradually building a diversified income system to enhance its anti-cyclical capabilities.

03. Pendle

Recently, Pendle has performed exceptionally well, with its TVL surpassing $9 billion on August 13, setting a new historical high. Its token price once approached $6, with a monthly increase of over 30%, far exceeding the broader market.

The logic is as follows:

1. The launch of Boros has converted the funding rates of BTC/ETH perpetual contracts into tradable assets, attracting a large number of users in a short time, becoming the core growth driver of Pendle V3. Statistics show that over $1.85 million worth of BTC and ETH was deposited within the first two days of Boros's launch, driving Pendle's TVL to surge sharply.

2. Pendle has deep collaborations with protocols like Ethena and Aave, launching strategies like PT-USDe, which contributed nearly 60% of Pendle's TVL.

3. Since 2025, approximately $41 billion in institutional funds have flowed into DeFi, and Pendle's Citadels compliance program has facilitated institutional funding, accelerating the rise of TVL.

04. Uniswap

As the leading DEX, entering 2025, Uniswap has two major catalysts: the official launch of the V4 version and the launch of the exclusive Layer 2 network "Unichain."

1. The launch of the V4 version allows developers to utilize Hooks to create customized pools and strategies, enhancing the protocol's vitality. Currently, over 2,500 Hook pools have been deployed, with projects like Bunni and EulerSwap utilizing Hooks achieving cumulative trading volumes exceeding $100 million, bringing new vitality to Uniswap.

2. Uniswap plans to build an exclusive ecosystem through Unichain, which has already accounted for over 70% of daily active trading. This not only expands the user base but also diversifies single-chain dependence, improving risk resistance.

05. Fluid

In early August, Fluid's trading volume briefly surpassed Uniswap, reaching $1.5 billion in a single day, slightly higher than Uniswap's $1.3 billion during the same period. Fluid significantly improves capital utilization efficiency by converting collateral from lending pools into trading liquidity through its unique liquidity layer. This model allows Fluid to achieve impressive trading volumes even with relatively low TVL.

The logic is as follows:

1. Releasing a large amount of liquidity: Fluid cleverly uses the collateral/debt from lending pools directly as liquidity for trading pairs, allowing assets to serve "two purposes." Users earn interest by depositing ETH or stablecoins in Fluid while these assets are used to provide trading depth, generating additional fee income. More importantly, Fluid's liquidity layer automatically adjusts the share of each asset used for trading based on borrowing utilization rates and dynamically increases collateral requirements as funds approach borrowing limits to prevent risks of runs and liquidations. This design significantly reduces capital fragmentation and improves the turnover efficiency of unit liquidity.

2. Rapid development: Since its launch in 2023, Fluid has rapidly developed, becoming the fastest-growing DEX on Ethereum, achieving a cumulative trading volume of $10 billion in just 100 days. It is now set to launch a more efficient "lightweight" exchange, expected to further increase daily trading volumes by $400-600 million, with rapid product iteration providing growth potential for the FLUID token's value.

3. Rising market recognition and potential valuation: With the increase in trading volume, the FLUID price jumped 14% in early August. Even after this round of increases, its circulating market cap is around $290 million, significantly lower than Uniswap, making it a relatively undervalued asset with high growth potential.

06. Lido

As the largest liquid staking protocol on Ethereum, Lido is entering a new round of development peaks in 2025. Currently, Lido's TVL is close to $41 billion, accounting for 26% of the total DeFi TVL.

By organizing, it can be seen that Lido is deepening its competitive moat, with more and more applications accepting stETH as collateral or payment means, enhancing its liquidity and demand. For example, lending protocols like Aave have supported stETH as collateral for loans, and stable pools like Curve also provide stETH trading pairs, with stETH rapidly integrating into various corners of DeFi.

07. Aave

As of now, Aave's TVL has risen to approximately $38.9 billion, nearly doubling since the beginning of the year, accounting for nearly a quarter of the entire DeFi TVL, firmly holding the top position in the lending market.

This year, the narrative around stablecoins has exploded, with the supply of Aave's GHO stablecoin increasing from about $146 million to approximately $314 million, rising over 100%, and gradually expanding to networks like Arbitrum and Base, which is expected to continue to enhance Aave's influence in the stablecoin sector.

Moreover, Aave has recently announced frequent collaboration news. On one hand, it has launched the Horizon project to expand RWA channels, and on the other hand, it has partnered with Plasma to launch an institutional incentive fund aimed at attracting more financial companies to move their businesses onto the blockchain. This series of initiatives solidifies Aave's position as an institutional-level DeFi lending gateway.

08. Curve

Curve's decentralized stablecoin crvUSD has celebrated its two-year anniversary with impressive performance.

As an over-collateralized stablecoin launched by Curve, crvUSD has been widely integrated into major DeFi protocols over two years of development and can even be used for everyday payments. Thanks to its unique LLAMMA automatic liquidation mechanism, crvUSD has demonstrated excellent resilience during market fluctuations, maintaining a 1:1 peg while maximizing the protection of collateral value. In the first half of this year, rising DeFi interest rates pushed the annualized yield of saving crvUSD (scrvUSD) close to 8%, showing an upward trend.

Although there are concerns about security, after experiencing incidents like DNS hijacking attacks, the Curve team quickly migrated to a new domain and advocated for the use of ENS, IPFS, and other censorship-resistant methods to provide front-end services.

Additionally, Curve founder Michael Egorov is developing a new yield protocol "Yield Basis," aimed at providing sustainable yields for on-chain BTC and ETH, potentially expanding the Curve ecosystem into RWA.

09. SKY

As a stablecoin issued by MakerDAO (Sky), USDS currently ranks fourth in market capitalization, adopting an over-collateralization model where higher-value crypto assets must be locked in before minting. Recently, the GENIUS Act prohibited stablecoins from "directly paying interest," so USDS yields come from collateral assets participating in on-chain staking and liquidity mining, rather than direct payouts, which partially avoids the restrictions of the act. Currently, sUSDS's annualized yield is close to 5%, providing a certain advantage in the context of a 2.7% inflation rate in the U.S.

Currently, mainstream institutions like Coinbase have launched SKY and USDS trading in July, marking a key step for Maker towards traditional finance.

10. Spark

Since April, Spark's TVL has surged over 200%, currently around $8.2 billion, ranking eighth among DeFi protocols. Such a large influx of funds has directly boosted market confidence in Spark, leading to a rapid rebound in SPK prices and new highs.

Looking back, Spark's initial launch generated significant interest, attracting a large number of users to participate in early trading, with trading volume surging and price fluctuations occurring, coupled with major platforms like Binance and Coinbase opening trading simultaneously, injecting considerable liquidity into SPK.

More importantly, Spark is backed by MakerDAO's billions in reserves and a stable synthetic asset system that has been operating for years, making it one of the few projects in the DeFi space that was "born with a silver spoon." Therefore, Spark's products have a high safety margin from the start, providing confidence for institutional and large fund entry.

Looking ahead, Spark has a relatively complete product matrix, allowing for diversified income scenarios. Its product line currently includes SparkLend, SparkSavings, SLL, and almost encompasses all elements of the DeFi yield closed loop.

11. Chainlink

As a leading oracle, Chainlink recently launched a new Chainlink reserve mechanism that automatically converts service fees paid by enterprises and DApps into LINK and deposits them into an on-chain reserve pool, accumulating over $1 million in LINK, which means a continuous source of income in the future, indicating that selling pressure on LINK in the market will decrease. The official statement indicates that reserves will not be withdrawn for several years, supporting the long-term growth of the network, which can be seen as a "burning" deflationary benefit for LINK.

Additionally, as of August, Chainlink's network has secured over $93 billion in DeFi value, reaching a historical high, including over 83% of Ethereum's on-chain assets and nearly 100% of assets on new chains like Base.

Chainlink has also recently partnered with ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, to seamlessly integrate its foreign exchange and precious metals data on-chain.

12. Pengu

Last month, PENGU made a comeback with the NFT + Meme narrative, and the well-known institution Canary Capital submitted an ETF application—namely the Canary Spot PENGU ETF, proposing that 80-95% of the investment portfolio be in PENGU and 5-15% in Pudgy Penguins NFTs.

After the news that the SEC officially accepted this ETF application, market expectations for the "Penguin ETF" have turned optimistic.

⚠️ Risk Warning: The above analysis is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice.

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