The power in the cryptocurrency industry has shifted from traditional participants to five major forces driving on-chain finance and control.
These five forces are stablecoins, ETFs, underlying protocol upgrades, block space security, and high throughput execution.
The role of traditional "gatekeepers" such as exchanges and regulators has diminished.
The current power core in the crypto space revolves around five levers: dollar liquidity (stablecoins), capital markets (ETFs and asset tokenization), underlying protocol upgrade roadmaps, block space security markets, and high throughput execution.
Since 2024, the focus of influence has shifted from the previous "exchanges and regulators" landscape to a new core.
The Bitcoin (BTC) spot ETF has become a mainstream channel for large-scale capital inflows. For example, BlackRock's IBIT product has an asset management scale of approximately $85.4 billion.
At the same time, stablecoins have rapidly become the fastest channel for dollar settlements and are now operating under the U.S. federal framework following the introduction of the GENIUS Act.
On the technical level, the Ethereum (ETH) Pectra upgrade (including EIP-7702) is reshaping the wallet user experience, the Solana (SOL) Firedancer client is about to launch, and EigenLayer has transformed staking Ethereum (ETH) into a security leasing market with a real-time penalty mechanism. Key developments are expected in these areas in the coming months.
Direct control over capital flows or block space.
The ability to formulate and promote technical roadmaps that others must follow.
Announced and credible next steps will be realized in the coming quarters.
BlackRock currently controls the world's largest Bitcoin spot ETF and the most influential institutional cash tokenization fund. IBIT leads the ETF space in asset scale, while BUIDL has pushed government bond tokenization products into the mainstream market for qualified investors, achieving a multi-chain layout.
BlackRock has also expressed intentions to expand its crypto ETF product line, with product types not limited to BTC and ETH.
IBIT: As of August 20, 2025, net assets are approximately $85.4 billion. It has the ability to dominate capital flows and fee rates in this space, becoming the de facto standard for traditional financial users entering the crypto market.
BUIDL: In March 2025, asset management scale exceeded $1 billion. It is no longer limited to Ethereum (ETH)—BlackRock and Securitize have launched new share classes including Solana (SOL) to expand distribution and composability.
More crypto ETFs: BlackRock is considering adding new ETF products based on market demand and regulatory approval.
Deepening the underlying construction of asset tokenization: BUIDL and subsequent products are expected to further integrate with BlackRock's Aladdin system (its core for portfolio and operations) and promote multi-link integration based on counterparty needs.
As the hub for ETF capital flows and cash tokenization, BlackRock can dominate the direction of liquidity concentration and the allocation of on-chain and off-chain yields.
Notably, IBIT is the fastest ETF in history to surpass $10 billion in scale, achieving this in just 34 trading days.
Tether's USDT is the digital dollar foundation in the crypto space, supporting centralized exchanges, on-chain markets, and cross-border payments.
Tether's scale allows Ardoino to directly influence the price and availability of dollar liquidity.
He also reinvests profits into hardware infrastructure (Bitcoin mining, energy, and privacy-focused AI), positioning Tether as a key infrastructure operator in the industry.
USDT Market Cap: As of August 21, 2025, approximately $167 billion, the largest in the crypto industry, serving as the benchmark for on-chain dollar liquidity.
Energy and mining expansion: New Bitcoin mining data centers are being built, including a biogas project in Brazil.
U.S. strategic advancement: Tether has hired Bo Hines, a former member of the White House crypto advisory group, to assist in its U.S. business layout.
Expanding hard asset layouts such as energy and mining, and building AI/edge computing systems for privacy protection.
Deepening payment and remittance channels, focusing on the emerging market dollar corridor dominated by stablecoins.
When a single issuer controls most of the crypto dollar supply, its reserve choices, compliance attitude, and infrastructure investments will impact the entire market.
This will change price spreads, settlement speeds, and user growth across chains. Despite tightening compliance reviews, market demand for dollar stablecoins is expected to continue growing.
Industry Insight: In 2024, Tether became the seventh-largest net buyer of U.S. Treasury bonds, ahead of many countries.
Ethereum (ETH) Pectra upgrade in May 2025 (now live) released EIP-7702, allowing ordinary external accounts (EOAs) to operate like smart contract accounts. This account abstraction innovation will impact wallets, layer 2 networks (L2), and payment experiences.
Pectra also enhances validator quotas, changing staking economics and node operations. Buterin continues to influence Ethereum's future "built-in" features through writing, research, and core development work.
Pectra is live: EIP-7702 allows EOAs to temporarily execute code (session keys, social recovery, batch operations) and is compatible with ERC-4337, greatly enhancing wallet experience.
Validator/Staking updates: The maximum effective stake for a single validator has increased from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, achieving staking centralization and reducing consensus load.
Historical data expiration (EIP-4444): Partially launched in July 2025, reducing hard drive requirements and paving the way for light nodes, with further iterations to follow.
Verkle trees and statelessness: Ongoing research to promote Ethereum's transition to a Verkle tree architecture, achieving stateless clients and lowering hardware thresholds.
Built-in PBS (ePBS, proposer-builder separation mechanism): This mechanism is being advanced to strengthen censorship resistance and optimize maximum extractable value (MEV) distribution.
Ethereum (ETH) continues to set standards for L2, wallets, and on-chain finance. Buterin's roadmap will directly impact the cost, performance, and developer experience of the entire ecosystem.
Industry Insight: Buterin's Balvi Foundation has donated $9.4 million USDC to the University of Maryland and approximately $5.3 million to the EPIWATCH project at the University of New South Wales.
Solana (SOL), with its high throughput and low fees, has become a center for consumer applications and rapid dollar settlements. In 2025, stablecoin activity on the network surged.
The biggest breakthrough driven by Yakovenko is Firedancer, a validator client independently developed by Jump, aimed at enhancing network resilience and capacity. If successful, it will end Solana's reliance on a single main client, achieving true client diversity.
Firedancer progress: Testing accelerated in 2025. The early "Frankendancer" hybrid client is live, the full client has replayed mainnet blocks, and achieved millions of TPS in controlled testing—this is a key milestone towards production deployment.
Stablecoin scale: By the first half of 2025, Solana's daily active stablecoin addresses continued to exceed one million, with circulating scale rapidly increasing.
Phased rollout of Firedancer: As Jump transitions from testing to production hardening, it will continue to focus on validator diversity metrics, extending to the end of 2025.
Payment and decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) focus: Ongoing optimization of payment experiences and real-world infrastructure networks (such as Helium's enterprise access model), with Solana directly competing with Ethereum L2 in speed and cost.
If Firedancer is successfully deployed, Solana's execution layer economics and network resilience will undergo significant changes: extreme risks (tail risks) will decrease, and throughput application capacity will increase, laying a more solid foundation for global dollar liquidity.
This combination will give Yakovenko significant influence in the next round of consumer-grade payment deployments.
Industry Insight: Yakovenko once stated that the inspiration for proof-of-history came from a late-night coffee binge, ultimately leading to the 2018 white paper.
EigenLayer transforms Ethereum (ETH) staking into a security leasing market. Actively Validated Services (AVS) can now "rent" Ethereum's trust without building their own validator networks.
With the launch of the penalty mechanism and new multi-chain validation features, AVS can operate on L2 and anchor Ethereum's security. Kannan has efficiently coordinated a new type of security layer that many projects depend on.
Penalty mechanism launch (April 17, 2025): Misconduct can now be penalized, improving EigenLayer's initial design. At launch, there were already billions of dollars in re-staked assets and dozens of AVS participants.
AVS on L2: Multi-chain validation allows services to execute on L2 while anchoring validation to Ethereum, achieving scalability without sacrificing trust.
Risk institutionalization: Expected to drive the standardization of AVS risk models, insurance, and operational frameworks to meet institutional needs. Analysts point out that these are key to broader adoption.
Wider validation coverage: Continuously expanding L2 native validation, cross-domain services, and launching development tools like EigenCloud to enhance the usability of "verifiability as a service."
If more crypto infrastructure rents security through EigenLayer rather than building their own tokens and validator networks, Kannan's roadmap will determine who receives security, how risks are priced, and where developers choose to deploy.
This change will impact L2 design, the maximum extractable value (MEV) market, and institutional participation.
Industry Insight: a16z purchased approximately 70 million EigenLayer (EIGEN) tokens to support the launch of EigenCloud, demonstrating confidence in the "verifiability as a service" model.
Regulators and exchange leaders remain important, but the decisive power has shifted in 2025. Richard Teng (Binance) leads large liquidity and token listings, while Jeremy Allaire (Circle) secured a full regulatory pathway for USDC in the EU under MiCA.
However, compared to Tether's dominance over crypto dollar supply, BlackRock's ETF and asset tokenization pipeline, the underlying protocol (Ethereum and Solana) upgrade roadmaps, and EigenLayer's new security leasing market, their influence has noticeably narrowed in this cycle.
A broader anchor is evident in derivatives: As of 2025, Bitcoin (BTC) perpetual contracts account for about 68% of trading volume. This indicates that the true market leaders are those controlling the flow of funds (ETFs, stablecoins, execution layers, and re-staking).
Asset tokenization progress: BUIDL asset management exceeds $1 billion, with existing Solana shares accepted as collateral by multiple platforms, showing the actual landing direction of on-chain cash.
Stablecoin infrastructure: Following the enactment of the U.S. GENIUS Act, new regulations on Treasury bonds and bankruptcy priority rules may reshape issuer bank access and risk landscape.
Ethereum Pectra follow-up: EIP-7702 is live, and some historical data expiration mechanisms are being advanced. The next focus: built-in PBS.
Solana execution capability: The deployment of Firedancer and payment integration will test Solana's potential for improvement in throughput and resilience.
Re-staking maturity: After the penalty mechanism and multi-chain validation, the next step is the standardization of AVS risk models and the implementation of institutional procurement frameworks.
Related: Gemini submits S-1 filing for IPO, planning to issue 16.7 million shares of GEMI stock on Nasdaq.
Original article: “Unveiling the Five Most Influential Figures in the Current Cryptocurrency Space and Their Strategic Layouts”
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