Written by: Oliver, Mars Finance
On June 19, 2025, when Ethereum's soul figure Vitalik Buterin replaced the oil barrel icon that originally represented "digital oil" with a cartoon "cow" on social media, it was not a casual graffiti. This seemingly small move is more like a carefully planned declaration of value and a profound reshaping of the logic of Ethereum's bull market. It implies that today, when spot ETFs have rolled out the red carpet for Wall Street, the story of Ethereum is transcending the slightly outdated metaphor of "digital world fuel" and evolving into a larger, more stable, and more complex value paradigm.

What Buterin forwarded and "edited" was a discussion on the three core values of Ethereum - "digital oil", "value storage" and "global reserve assets". These three concepts have long been familiar to the community, but when they are juxtaposed by the founder in a new visual language, their inherent tension and synergy emerge with unprecedented clarity. This "bull" is no longer a symbol of a single narrative, but an economic behemoth created by the three pillars. This article aims to deeply deconstruct this emerging new paradigm and explore how the foundation of Ethereum's value has undergone profound and subtle changes in its journey towards mainstream assets.
From "Digital Oil" to "Economic Heart": Revaluation of Value in the L2 Era
The narrative of Ethereum as "digital oil" is its earliest and most successful value positioning. This metaphor intuitively explains the fundamental purpose of ETH: as the fuel (Gas) that drives the operation of the world's largest smart contract platform. Every transfer, every DeFi interaction, and every NFT casting consumes ETH. This indispensable practicality has built a solid demand base for ETH. In the past, network congestion and high gas fees were even seen as a manifestation of network prosperity, directly linked to ETH's value capture.
However, entering 2025, this classic narrative is facing a profound challenge caused by Ethereum's own success. The Dencun upgrade in March 2024, especially the implementation of EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding), completely changed the rules of the game. By providing an exclusive and cheap data publishing channel (Blobs) for the Layer 2 (L2) network, Ethereum has successfully "outsourced" a large number of transaction activities to expansion solutions such as Arbitrum and Optimism. This is undoubtedly a huge technical victory, realizing the grand blueprint of allowing ordinary users to participate in the digital economy at a very low cost. But it also brings a sharp economic paradox: when the vast majority of economic activities migrate to the cheap L2, the congestion of the main network (L1) drops sharply, which directly leads to a sharp drop in gas fees and a sharp drop in ETH burning.
According to data on Dune Analytics, since the Dencun upgrade, the average gas price of Ethereum L1 has been in the single digit Gwei for a long time, which was unimaginable in the past few years. The reduction in fees means that the number of ETH destroyed through the EIP-1559 mechanism has also shrunk. This directly impacts the core logic of the "digital oil" narrative-that is, the positive correlation between network usage and value capture (deflation). If the consumption of "oil" is structurally decreasing, how can we evaluate its value?

This is the key to the paradigm shift in value. The new cognitive framework believes that the value of ETH is no longer just reflected in the fuel "consumed" on L1, but is upgraded to the "economic heart" that ensures the security of the entire modular ecosystem. Ethereum L1 is transforming from a crowded "world computer" to a highly secure "global settlement and security layer". Its core task is to provide the ultimate transaction finality and data availability for hundreds of L2s. L2s process a large number of transactions and then submit the compressed "proofs" back to L1 for final confirmation.
In this new model, ETH's value capture mechanism becomes more indirect, but potentially more robust. Its value no longer comes primarily from transaction friction, but from its "rent" as a security provider. Although the fees paid by a single L2 to L1 have decreased, the scale of this total "rent" will still be considerable as thousands of L2s emerge in the future. More importantly, the security of the entire ecosystem is entirely dependent on the total value of ETH staked on L1. A modular ecosystem with trillions of dollars of economic activity must be protected by a security layer of the same size or even higher. Therefore, the demand for ETH has shifted from "transactional demand" to "security demand". It is no longer gasoline, but the concrete that supports the foundation of the entire intercontinental highway network (all L2s), and its value is positively correlated with the total economic flow of the highway network (TVL and activity of all L2s). This shift frees the value of ETH from short-term fee fluctuations and anchors it on the longer-term, macro growth of the entire ecosystem.
The rise of "Internet bonds": when "ultrasound" falls silent
If the narrative of "digital oil" is undergoing a profound self-evolution, then the story of "value storage" has almost been completely rewritten. Once upon a time, "Ultrasound Money" was the slogan that the community was most proud of. Under the dual effects of "The Merge" drastically reducing the new issuance and EIP-1559's continuous burning of fees, ETH once entered a state of net deflation and was hailed as an asset that is more "sound" than Bitcoin's "sound money". The negative inflation rate that continues to beat on the ultrasound.money website is the core belief of countless investors that ETH can surpass BTC.
However, the L2 paradox mentioned above also casts a shadow on this beautiful deflation myth. The reduction in L1 fees has greatly reduced the power of the burning mechanism. Data shows that since the Dencun upgrade, ETH has returned to a state of slight inflation in many periods. This makes the slogan of "ultrasonic currency" somewhat embarrassing and forces the market to find a more resilient value support.
Thus, the narrative of "The Internet Bond" came into being and quickly became a more attractive story in the eyes of institutional investors. The core of this concept is that through the proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism, anyone holding ETH can participate in network verification through staking, and thus obtain stable returns denominated in ETH. As of mid-2025, Ethereum's annualized staking rate of return (APR) has stabilized at around 3%-4%. This income is not generated out of thin air. It comes from transaction fees paid by users (tips) and ETH rewards issued by the protocol. It is a reasonable reward for the services provided by validators to maintain network security.
This endogenous income denominated in the protocol's native assets makes ETH a productive capital asset. It is no longer just a static commodity waiting to appreciate, but an interest-bearing asset that can continuously generate "cash flow" (albeit ETH-based). For traditional financial investors who are accustomed to dividends and bond interest, this is an extremely easy-to-understand and attractive model. VanEck analysts have clearly pointed out that ETH's staking income can be regarded as the "risk-free interest rate" in the digital world, and the yields of all DeFi protocols built on Ethereum can be priced based on this.
The narrative of "Internet bonds" has become stronger because of the prosperity of liquid staking tokens (LSTs). LSTs like Lido's stETH and Rocket Pool's rETH allow ordinary users to obtain staking income while maintaining the liquidity of their assets. These LSTs were then deeply integrated into every corner of DeFi as collateral and trading pairs, creating the so-called "LSTfi" ecosystem. This forms a powerful flywheel of value: ETH is heavily staked due to its interest-bearing properties, which improves the security and decentralization of the network; the generated LST, in turn, becomes the cornerstone of the DeFi world, further increasing the demand for ETH as an underlying asset.
This narrative shift is crucial. It transforms ETH's value proposition from a speculative story that relies on network congestion and expectations of scarcity to an investment story based on actual economic activity and predictable returns. Even if the deflationary halo of "ultrasonic currency" fades, as long as the Ethereum ecosystem continues to prosper, its income attribute as an "Internet bond" will remain. This provides ETH with a solid value foundation and leaves huge room for imagination for future ETF products - a spot ETF that can distribute staking income directly to investors will undoubtedly become a nuclear weapon to detonate the next round of institutional demand.
“Anchor of Trust”: The Ultimate Settlement Layer of the Digital Economy
No matter how the “oil” metaphor evolves or how tempting the yield of “bonds” is, Ethereum’s third and most solid value pillar lies in its position as the “anchor of trust” for the global digital economy. This role, the “global reserve asset”, is built on decentralization, security, and unparalleled network effects, making it the most trusted underlying settlement layer in the digital world.
First, in the DeFi world, which has reached hundreds of billions of dollars in scale, ETH is the undisputed king of collateral. In core lending protocols such as Aave and MakerDAO, ETH and its LST derivatives occupy an absolute dominant position in the total amount of collateral. A report by Galaxy Research pointed out that the market trusts ETH because of its deep liquidity, relatively low volatility (compared to other crypto assets), and time-tested security. Users are confident in lending billions of dollars in stablecoins because they believe that the ETH collateral behind them is solid. This status as the "DeFi central bank reserve" creates a huge, continuous and sticky demand for ETH.
Second, Ethereum is the center of gravity of the global stablecoin ecosystem. Although chains such as Tron have a place in USDT issuance, the final settlement of the value of the vast majority of innovative and core stablecoins, such as USDC and DAI, occurs on Ethereum. Ethereum carries a market value of more than $100 billion in stablecoins, which constitute the blood of the digital economy, and ETH is the vascular system that ensures the safe flow of this blood.
More far-reaching, traditional financial giants are voting with their feet. When BlackRock chose to launch its first tokenized money market fund BUIDL on Ethereum, it was not for Ethereum's transaction speed or cost. On the contrary, it chose Ethereum's "diamond-like" trust and security. Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin once said that Ethereum provides trust that is "strong enough to resist nation-state-level adversaries." This "Lindy Effect" that has been precipitated after more than ten years of development - the longer it exists, the more likely it is to continue to exist - is a moat that no emerging public chain can replicate in the short term. With the rise of the wave of tokenization of real-world assets (RWA), Ethereum's position as the ultimate settlement layer of global value will become increasingly unshakable, and its value as a reserve asset will continue to be consolidated.
Conclusion: Join forces to build a "bull", not go it alone
Now, let's look back at the "bull" that Vitalik sent out. It no longer just represents the expectations of the bull market, but a subtle summary of the source of Ethereum's value. This bull is driven by three forces:
It has the strong beating of an "economic heart": as the security cornerstone of the entire modular ecosystem, its value grows in sync with the total size of an expanding digital economy. It has the stable income of "Internet bonds": the endogenous pledge income provides it with a solid value foundation and a clear valuation model, attracting long-term capital seeking stable returns. It bears the heavy weight of the "anchor of trust": as the ultimate collateral of DeFi and the settlement layer of global value, it precipitates the most valuable consensus and trust in the market.
These three pillars do not exist in isolation, but are interdependent and reinforce each other. The strong "anchor of trust" status has attracted the prosperity of DeFi and RWA, driving the growth of the "economic heart"; and as an "Internet bond" The interest-bearing ability has encouraged massive capital to be pledged, providing an indestructible security guarantee for the entire system.
The bull argument of Ethereum has bid farewell to the era that can be simply summarized by a word (such as "deflation"). It has become more mature, more diverse, and more resilient. It no longer relies on a single narrative, but builds a value matrix with self-consistent internal logic that can withstand external shocks. For institutional investors who are used to analyzing complex systems, this grand narrative full of internal tension and synergy may have just begun to show its true charm. The cow that Vitalik replaced heralds the arrival of such an era.