# Chiara El Rikabi - Ethereum 2025: Scaling the Summit or Stuck in the Weeds?

- Channel: [ETHCluj Meetup](https://streameth.org/ethcluj-meetup)
- Date: 2025-10-07
- Duration: 27:10
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-rypWdCimKZw
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rypWdCimKZw

## Description

With Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade going live and potentially reshaping the roadmap, this session offers a rapid-fire market update on ETH's performance, key network fundamentals, ongoing scaling challenges, and what this means for ETH as an asset in 2025 and beyond. We’ll then dive deep into how staking is evolving on the network, with a spotlight on institutional-grade staking via 21Shares ETPs.

## Transcript

Hi everyone. I'm very happy to be here today with you. It's my first time in Romania inclusion and thank you so much for inviting me. This is um the agenda today. We will speak uh a little bit about Ethereum. But first things first, I would like to introduce my company and myself. My name is Kiara. I'm head of Italy and Tino at 21 Shares. But who is 21 Shares? 21 Shares is a company specialized in digital assets. Its main offices are based in New York, London and Surig where I work. 21 shares was the first company to launch a crypto ETP in Europe and now uh ETP first of all ETP stands for exchange traded product. It is an easy financial instruments to get access to cryptocurrencies in an easy way. And now the company offers the largest platform of ETPs on crypto with more than 50 products. All our products are 100 physically backed. It means that we hold the same amount of crypto that the product represents and this gives the investor safety and transparency. In addition, all our products are Delta One. It means that the product tracks the crypto directly without any tricks. No swap, uh, no lending, no borrowing. Our mission is to create bridges between the traditional finance and the crypto world. For this reason, all our ETPS on crypto are listed on the major European stock exchanges. For example, Aeronx Paris, Amsterdam, uh, London Stock Exchange, Deutsche Borgs, etc. And I hope to see soon these products also in Italy on Bors Italana. In this way, the investor can buy and sells ETPS on crypto in the same way he usually buy or sells uh stocks, bonds, uh or ETF in general. Uh since our launch in 2018, we have expanded to USA and Australia. And now in USA we have seven ETFs including the popular Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETF while in Australia we have two ETF. In this chart you can find some uh numbers related to our company. I would like to highlight the AUM which is I think the most important number in these slides. We currently have between 8 and 10 billion of asset under management. I usually say uh this range 8 uh to 10 billion because it depends on the crypto price which goes up and downs depending on the market. Anyway, reaching the peak of 10 billion for us is something we are very proud of because we have helped to build this industry from scratch some years ago. So in a nutshell 21 shares help cryp to make crypto investing easy, affordable and accessible to anyone. But now let's speak about Ethereum. Since the beginning of 2024, Ethereum had had hard time keeping up with the other blockchain, in particular Solana. Indeed, Ethereum last year didn't perform very well, in particular, in comparison to its most important competitors. And the first one is Solana. Solana is cheaper, is faster and therefore Solana tracks more users, more developers and more activity and more money. If we have a look at the chart, we can see that Solana's price has grown up much more than Ethereums. On the other hand, Ethereum is following a more complex long-term plan. Ethereum is moving toward a system with layers to solution to help scale. It makes sense technically, but it can create a split user experience. And so now people may use many different layers too. and the Ethereum main chain often feels empty. Anyway, at 21 shares, we are still positive on Ethereum for many reason. First of all, uh Ethereum, it's the most decentralized network. It still has the best tools for developers and it has a strong institutional trust. So we believe that in future Ethereum can start to grow again. But let's see in depth why we are so positive on Ethereum. First of all, improvements and updates. Ethereum has experienced and will experience some big improvements. During the last year, Ethereum had Duncan Denan upgrade. Thank update uh Denan update made layer 2 solution uh cheaper and faster. So many users moved to layer 2 solution and as a result fewer people use Ethereum as a main chain. Now a big question rise. If most transaction happen off the main chain, how will Ethereum keep making money? In general, I think we think at 21 shares that we are facing a big uh shift because big companies are starting to build on Ethereum's layers 2 solution. We can see that from the chart. Kraken is building its own layer 2 solution which is called Kraken Inc. Sony is uh focusing on digital identity and on um gaming. And last but not least, Deutsche Bank is looking at Ethereum for tokenized finance. Anyway, in future, many layers to solution may start to consider to share revenues with Ethereum in order to create a more balanced system. And in addition, Ethereum will experience other improvements and updates, for example, RISCV. And this update will make Ethereum faster, cheaper, and this will help to bring people back to Ethereum main chain. So for sure 2024 was a bad year for Ethereum, but we think that this year in 2025, Ethereum could start to grow again. This is another reason because we are bullish on Ethereum. Stable coin. Stable coin are a big part of crypto ecosystem and Ethereum uh is their main home. In May 2025, the total supply of stable coin has reached 140 billion, a new record. But this is important also because it means that people still trust Ethereum as a base layer for their financial activity on chain. Ethereum doesn't just have the biggest amount of stable coin like USDT, USDC, but also the widest variety like R AI or LUSD. And um stable coin are growing for many reasons. Not only because they are used in a real world, for example, for payment or foreign exchanges, but also because they are used in defy as collateral, for borrowing, for lending, for staking. In this scenario, the regulation is getting more stable. In Europe, the Mika is giving a legal structure to the Eurobased stable coin. While in USA, we have new laws like the Genius Act which are getting closer to approval. So we think that stable coin are likely to grow more and Ethereum will benefit from it. Third reason, Ethereum ETF. In 2024, Ethereum spot ETF was launched in USA, but it didn't get the same success and interest of Bitcoin spot ETF. And that's normal because Ethereum is a more complex asset. Bitcoin is easy to understand. It's a store of value. It's digital gold. While Ethereum is a technological platform, a base layer for defy tokenization NFT. It takes longer for traditional investor to understand that Bitcoin usually comes first and Ethereum follows. So also if we have a look at the at the chart we can see that ETF flows peaked in February. Then they slow down between March and April due to global uncertainty and then they started to rise again. Therefore, in general, with better market sentiment and with more education, we think that ETF flows can grow again. And indeed, we recently saw eight straight days of inflows. This is a sign of renew interest. Last but not least, there are other catalyst. There are some big trends that we should look at. Real world asset tokenization. More institution are bringing real world assets like government bond or real estate on chain and the Ethereum is the right place for that because of its decentralization and its security. This activity will bring more liquidity, more fees and more long-term capital. Secondly, there is the defy revenue sharing. Many big defy platform like Avalanche or unis swap are starting to share revenues with the token holder and these will make defy more attractive. Ethereum will benefit from it because Ethereum is one of the most important defy platform. Last but not least, we have technological improvement. Ethereum road maps includes upgrade like pectra upgrade and ricv upgrade. These improvements will make Ethereum more efficient, cheaper and more user friendly. For example, it will be possible to pay fees through stable coin. I don't want to be too much uh technical also because I'm a sales and uh now I will focus my speech also on another feature of Ethereum. With Ethereum, it's possible to stake assets. But let's see what staking is. uh some blockchain are not based on the mining but they are based on the proof ofstake mechanism. Staking is how some blockchain like Ethereum keep things secure and running. Uh since some blockchain are based on the proof of stake in this system people lock their crypto to help validate transaction and so this help the network to run smoothly. In return they can get staking rewards. So instead of holding crypto without doing anything, it's possible to earn an extra income and therefore staking is a smart choice for investor at 21 shares. Part of our mission is to make staking simple, especially for people who don't want to deal with uh technicalities or technical stuff. But let's see how big the staking market is. The total crypto market is worth 3.55 trillion and 615 billion comes from uh proof ofstake assets. It means 17% of the market and of those proof ofstake assets 292 billion are staked. This means that staking is no longer a small niche. It has become a core part of the crypto ecosystem and it's used by both retail and professional investor to get staking rewards. As mentioned at 21 shares, part of our mission is to make staking simple. Let's see how and let's see how the process works. First of all, an investor buys an ETP on crypto, for example, Ethereum staking ATP on a regulated and transparent stock exchange through fiat money. 21 shares buys the underlying the crypto and 21 shares holds the underlying in cold storage. Then 21 shares delegate the underlying for example that Ethereum uh to uh institutional grade validators like uh Block Demon, Coinbase Cloud or Figment. the validator uh earn staking rewards and 21 shares collect the staking rewards and the staking rewards are reinvested into the ATPs. So the investor can uh see the performance of the ATP growth um enjoying fully transparency and daily liquidity. Thanks to our sites and our technology, the process is studied to be efficient uh safe and optimized to have to get big results. For sure there are some risk with staking. The most important risk are two. Slashing and liquidity. Slashing occurs when a validator behaves badly. For example, being offline or trying to cheat. In this case, a part of the stake assets are burnt or uh they are lost. At 21 shares we avoid or we face this risk in different ways. Uh first of all we select only top validator with excellent anti-slashing track records and in addition we have special insurance for each providers. I would like to highlight that so far none of our products have ever been slashed. The second risk is liquidity. If you decide to stake assets directly on chain, your coin can get locked for a period and this period is uh called lock up period and it can be hard to get back your investments. At 21 shares, we avoid this risk in different ways. First of all, we uh stake only a part of our assets, only a person. We always keep a reserve for any withdrawal for any redemption. And we use a specific staking approach. Our specific staking approach has been called by our market makers golden standard is it's an active staking approach in order to manage demand and flows. only one minute. Okay. Dem I've quite I'm almost finished. Uh to we are able to manage um flows and demand. uh because through an ATP we have to provide daily liquidity and this is very very important because the investor had when the investor buys or sells ETBs on crypto he has to be able to enter and exit the investment whenever he wants without any problems. Uh I will skip this slide and I would like to show you the range of our products. At the moment we have 14 staking ETPS from Ethereum, Injective Aptos etc. But why to choose a staking 21 share staking ETPs for their simplicity? Because you don't have to handle with password, credential, private keys. For their security, all our assets are held in cold storage. We never move our assets out of of our custody system. Uh for high quality provider we always select top validators and for um low fees and high yield. Thanks to our sites we are able to negotiate low commission rate. I think I finished. I can see uh you will receive I hope if you are interested I can give you the slides where you will find the differences between staking and lending. Staking is a cryptonative concept while lending comes from uh uh the traditional finance and you will find also some technical terms to understand better crypto ETPS and staking and it's all thank you so much. [Applause] Brilliant. Now, thank you so much for that. If you could stay there for a few questions if that's okay. Uh oh, we've got one right here. Um, so question from DAP developer 30. What do you think about the leadership of the ETH Foundation? Do you think they're making the right decisions? >> Oh, this is a very technical question. Honestly, um, if you would like to have a serious and precise answer to this question, I really suggest to get in touch with me. I can give you my business cards and we can have a discussion with us with our research team. Who is the best referral point for this kind of uh question? >> Okay, fair enough. Are there any other questions from the crowd from anyone for Charara? Um I've got a question then. Um so it sounds like everybody's very bullish on ETH, especially 21 shares. Um, what potential threats do you think there are out there for ETH over the next few years? Would you say potentially regulatory concerns? >> Potential, sorry. >> What potential threats are there on the on the road map ahead for ETH? What things could go wrong? I suppose >> with Ethereum >> with Ethereum. Yeah. Because in my opinion, Ethereum is facing the competition of first of all Solana which are cheaper faster and um Solana is attracting a different audience instead of Ethereum. Ethereum is more concentrated on big transaction but this big transaction are very uh slow to process while Solana is focused on small transaction and it's more focused on um gaming social media and there is a kind of fashion because a lot of application has been built on Solana for example mecoin like the Trump coin So in this moment there is a kind of pump on Solana. Ethereum is is not um going down but it's more slow in growing and in improving its um features. >> Gotcha. Well, we actually in the meantime we've had another question come up. >> Do we have also these questions? >> The these are actually the four one question four times for some reason. Um but let's see. Um, do you think that institutional grade staking solutions might eventually centralize validator power? How can the network prevent that? >> Do you think institutional grade staking solution might eventually centralize? But this is I'm sorry this another very technical question and I I don't know. I really don't know. We have to ask to our research. >> That's okay. Well, the gas guzzler 87's going to have to wait for uh for that. Oh, is that another question we've got there? ask for what does what does T21 shares look for when they are judging whether they want to uh accumulate a new token or whatever it is what are the sort of aspects within that token that you look for that is green lights >> so do you want to know uh how we decide uh which uh crypto >> okay this is an easy question for me for my role Yes, there are many process um many departments are involved. First of all, research in our company the research is our research team is very important because our goal yes for sure is to sell but also to spread education because without education it's impossible to sell this kind of product. So first of all the research team has to study the crypto the underlying and we select only crypto um in which we believe when they have fundamentals and a serious project. Uh for example long time ago um there were u many mecoin like shibayino pepe they were liquid they could be listed but we decided not to launch them because in our opinion they were not serious products. Then the project is analyzed by our product development team because since the ETPs are financial instruments uh on stock exchanges like uh Deutsche books etc et all the green light we should have the green light of the stock exchanges if they are not liquid we are unable to launch them for the reason I told before for us it's very important that an investor can enter in the position whenever he wants also about staking for this reason we don't stake all the assets because if the market goes down and everyone want to uh go out from the investment we are unable to provide the liquidity do you know what I mean so two uh points for deciding which crypto to launch. The project has to be serious and the liquidity and then there is our management who gives the final approval. >> Thank you so much. I think that's all we've got time for in terms of questions but thanks again to Chiara. Can we put our hands together one last time? >> Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Peace.