Ethereum 2026: Is ETH undervalued based on the MVRV metric?

Author: Rick, Research Analyst at Messari; Translation: @Jinse Finance xz

With 2026 fast approaching, the relationship between Ethereum's price and fundamentals is clearer than at any time since the NFT craze.

As of December 16, 2025, the price of Ethereum has fallen below $3,000.

Through the MVRV metric and its dominance among tokenized assets, ETH appears to offer a constructive long-term investment for allocators.

The MVRV Z-score is used to assess whether ETH is overvalued or undervalued relative to its fair value. This metric compares market capitalization (i.e., spot price multiplied by circulating supply) with realized value (i.e., the total capital that has flowed into ETH).

The MVRV Z-score is used to assess whether ETH is overvalued or undervalued relative to its fair value. This metric compares market capitalization (i.e., spot price multiplied by circulating supply) with realized value (i.e., the total capital that has flowed into ETH).

Its formal definition is: The MVRV Z score equals the difference between the market capitalization and the realized market capitalization, divided by the standard deviation of the market capitalization (calculated cumulatively from the earliest available data point). During the NFT boom of 2021-2022, ETH's MVRV Z score surged to nearly 6, indicating extreme market frenzy. Since the Ethereum Merge, this metric has reverted to the mean and currently fluctuates mainly between 0 and 2—0 representing undervaluation, 1 close to fair value, and 2 leaning towards overvaluation. On May 7, 2025, when Ethereum's major technical upgrade, Pectra, was launched, the price of ETH was approximately $1,800, and the MVRV Z-score was approximately -0.1. As the price subsequently reached new all-time highs, the MVRV gradually climbed to nearly 2. After the Fusaka upgrade on December 3, 2025, ETH was trading at approximately $3,189, with an MVRV Z-score of 0.47. This indicates that it remained undervalued at a significantly higher price level, suggesting a similar post-upgrade market structure, but with a more robust fundamental positioning.

On-chain data further strengthens the bullish logic for Ethereum. In the asset tokenization field, Ethereum is the core settlement layer. According to data from RWA.xyz (excluding stablecoins in the statistics), Ethereum holds $11.9 billion in total tokenized locked value, accounting for 65.9% of the market share. Other base layers and Rollups have developed, but their scale is far smaller. As institutions migrate government bonds, credit, and other real-world assets to crypto channels to improve capital efficiency and reduce operating costs, Ethereum's liquidity, tool ecosystem, and compliance-oriented infrastructure are continuously deepening its moat. The undervaluation signal indicated by the MVRV Z-score, the positive price performance after the upgrade, and its increasing dominance among tokenized assets all point in the same direction. However, this still only reveals a small part of the bullish narrative for Ethereum. As spot ETFs channel regulated funds into ETH and digital asset treasuries (DATs) continue to accumulate ETH supply, the free float in the market is gradually tightening, and prices are becoming increasingly sensitive to marginal demand. For allocators seeking exposure to real economic throughput and scalable smart contracts, ETH at current prices is more of an opportunity to build a core position for 2026 than a risk at the end of the cycle.