"DeFi Day" shows its magic, will ETH rise?

Are we going to need 3000 to chase Ether?

Written by: Bright, Foresight News

CZ publicly stated on social media: "June 9 will be remembered as DeFi Day." Following the repeal of the "Defi Broker Rule," the U.S. crypto regulation has once again broken a layer of shackles. Subsequently, established DeFi tokens like AAVE and UNI have all entered a vigorous upward trend.

On June 9th, U.S. time, the speech "DeFi and the American Spirit" by the new SEC chairman Paul Atkins marks a fundamental shift in the logic of U.S. crypto regulation. Combined with the strategic adjustments of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the resonance of market funds, DeFi on the ETH chain is ushering in unprecedented structural opportunities. The three core driving forces of regulatory paradigm innovation, institutional capital influx, and technological breakthroughs together build the underlying logic for the outbreak of DeFi Summer 2.0.

1. Regulatory Easing: The Policy Catalyst for Defi Summer 2.0

In his speech on June 9, Atkins released three major regulatory signals, completely reversing the "enforcement-first" tone of the Gensler era.

First, the SEC has finally endorsed the principle of code neutrality. In his speech, Atkins used the metaphor that "self-driving car developers are not responsible for third-party abuse", and clearly shifted the responsibility from tool developers to users, clearing the legal barrier for "permissionless innovation" of DeFi protocols. This assertion is a direct response to the Tornado Cash developer case that arose during the previous Democratic administration, lifting the shackles on developers' compliance. Within 24 hours of the speech, DeFi blue-chip tokens such as AAVE and UNI all rose by more than 13%, and privacy track tokens such as AZTEC rose by 9%, confirming the value revaluation effect of regulatory relaxation with real money.

Second, it is the return of property rights and the legalization of Staking. Atkins emphasized that "the right to self-manage private property" is a core value of the United States, clearly supporting users to participate in on-chain financial activities directly through personal wallets. This statement completely ended the Gensler era's securitization accusations against liquid staking protocols (LSD) such as Lido and Rocket Pool. The leading token in the LSD space, LDO, saw a rise of 11% that day, and other re-staking projects like EigenLayer also rose simultaneously, showing a reconstruction of institutional confidence in the Staking ecosystem.

Third, it is the implementation of the innovative sandbox mechanism. Like the DFSA in Dubai, the SEC announced the creation of an "innovation exemption" framework that allows registered and non-registered entities to quickly launch on-chain products under compliant conditions. This mechanism provides an officially licensed testing ground for the RWA (Real World Asset On-Chain) field, and the process of on-chain assets exceeding trillions of dollars will be accelerated.

2. Core Strengthening: Ethereum Foundation Promotes "Defipunk"

The Ethereum Foundation's 2030 plan clearly states that it will promote the establishment of an evaluation mechanism for "Defipunk" and facilitate the related transformation of DeFi projects.

In the plan, the Ethereum Foundation sees DeFi as the core vehicle to realize Ethereum's vision of "permissionless and censorship-resistant", and explicitly promotes DeFi to become an "open financial infrastructure in the digital age" through treasury allocation, technical support, and standard development. Among them, its key goal is to have on-chain DeFi allocations account for more than 30% of the treasury (non-ETH core holdings) by 2026, and prioritize supporting protocols with privacy and strong composability.

Based on the cypherpunk principle, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) promotes the establishment of a "Defipunk" evaluation framework, focusing on core features such as security, open source, financial sovereignty, technical solution priority and privacy protection, aiming to cultivate a censorship-resistant DeFi ecosystem through research, advocacy and fund allocation to cope with the current challenges of the DeFi ecosystem such as high privacy-related gas fees and user experience friction, and to solve the systemic vulnerabilities of the current DeFi that generally rely on centralized backdoors, multi-signature and other mechanisms.

Currently, the TVL on the ETH chain has rebounded to 66 billion USD compared to the lows in February and March, showing good expansion momentum, and is expected to surpass the peak in December 2024.

Recently, the TVL of AAVE, which has been performing well, is "higher and higher," with the TVL exceeding 26 billion USD and the staked ETH surpassing 9.3 million.

The UNI that surged 30% in a day has also shown impressive performance in recent data. The TVL has rebounded to $5.152 billion, expected to surpass the high of 2024.

3. Institutional Bullishness: ETH Remains the Preferred Choice in the Context of Crypto Compliance

On June 11, according to monitoring by farside, yesterday FETH net inflow was 26.3 million USD, Grayscale ETH net inflow was 9.7 million USD, and ETHW net inflow was 8.4 million USD. At the same time, Ethereum staking reached an all-time high of 34.8 million ETH, accounting for approximately 28.15% of the circulating supply.

The market expects that the SEC will soon approve a staking-supported Ethereum ETF, and REX Shares has submitted the relevant application. Meanwhile, BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust has seen no outflows for 23 consecutive trading days.

Recently, JackYi, the founder of LD Capital, once again issued an article reiterating his firm bullishness on Ethereum and its ecological tokens, saying that he currently holds 100,000 ETH options and believes that the Ethereum ecosystem is undervalued due to the following reasons: the ETH token itself is undervalued, and he is optimistic about the recovery of the ETH/BTC exchange rate during the bull market; After the liberalization of the crypto policy, projects with real income, users, and products will be the first to benefit from the inflow of traditional capital; Wall Street money is recently flowing into Ethereum to open positions. Trend Research, a subsidiary of LD Capital, is even more bullish on ETH, holding 142,000 ETH and a floating profit of $42.35 million.

The QCP research report believes that the implied volatility of Ethereum has risen, with the front at-the-money option volatility climbing to around 70%. The skew in the options market has also clearly shifted towards the bullish direction, increasing by 5 to 6 percentage points. The high funding rates of perpetual contracts further reinforce the bullish sentiment in the market. The inflow of funds into ETFs indicates that institutional interest is returning. This round of fund rotation may suggest that the market narrative is shifting from "Bitcoin is digital gold" to "Ethereum is the infrastructure layer for real-world assets (RWA)."

Looking to the future, macro positive factors are indeed accumulating momentum for Ethereum. Since the wild growth and regulatory vacuum of the DeFi summer in 2020, the crypto industry has completely immersed itself in a compliance context. With the advancement of the GENIUS Act in the U.S. Senate, Circle launching its IPO, and stablecoins gradually making progress in regulation, Ethereum's core position in tokenization and settlement infrastructure may welcome structural upside potential beyond expectations. Correspondingly, ETH-based DeFi is also set to soar again.