Consensys: How Ethereum as a trusted software system will reshape the global digital economy?

"Ethereum is the trusted software driving the digital world economy."

**Written by: **Consensys

Organized & Compiled: LenaXin, ChainCatcher

Every financial transaction contains an element of trust. The digital trust of Ethereum enables the digitization of massive assets, capital, and financial transactions, greatly enhancing the efficiency of the global financial system, allowing everyone from institutions to businesses to consumers to benefit.

On July 30th, Ethereum celebrates its tenth anniversary. On this occasion, Consensys released the report "Industrialization of Trust," which outlines the investment cases for Ethereum and the emerging technology category known as "Trustware." "Trustware" is an infrastructure that industrializes trust production, allowing trust to be encoded in the form of digital goods.

Consensys's research and analysis indicate that Ethereum has become the dominant blockchain platform, supporting over 50% of non-Bitcoin digital assets, including 60% of stablecoins, 60% of decentralized finance capital, and 80% of tokenized "real-world assets," such as stocks, money market funds, and bonds.

Ethereum's Breakthrough: Digital Trust and Trust Software

Trust software is an infrastructure that upgrades the simulated concept of trust, such as notes and ledgers validated by human agents and auditors, guaranteed by human insurance companies and regulatory agencies, to an equivalent digital trust concept that can be generated by algorithms.

For centuries, human civilization has relied on various forms of trust infrastructure, from tribal kinship to large institutions such as governments, insurance companies, auditing agencies, and legal systems. While these systems have facilitated cooperation and economic growth, the costs are exceptionally high. It is estimated that humanity spends over $9 trillion annually on trust-related matters, including insurance ($8.0 trillion), legal systems (over $1.0 trillion), and auditing ($290 billion). This staggering expenditure highlights a fundamental problem: the current models of trust do not scale effectively in the digital age. They are analog — slower, more expensive, and more fragmented than the always-online, highly automated, and rapidly evolving digital economy that relies on them.

Trust software endows ordinary data with the essential qualities of trust through a fully algorithmic process: validity and finality. Validity ensures the consistency and correctness of the data and possesses mathematical certainty. Finality guarantees the permanence of the data, which cannot be altered without incurring significant costs.

Ethereum allows these attributes to be added to the data in a scalable manner, without the need for continuous human intervention, thereby achieving trust at near-zero marginal cost. In this way, with its powerful public network and breakthrough cryptoeconomic algorithms capable of generating digital trust, Ethereum can significantly enhance the validation of financial transactions in terms of speed, cost, security, and scale.

Investment Cases

For many years, investors have regarded ETH as the "second largest cryptocurrency." This is true, but it doesn’t mean much. Nowadays, they understand that ETH represents the explosive growth of stablecoins and other tokenized assets, which they see being discussed in commercial channels every day, and they may even be using them in their daily lives.

They learned that ETH underpins the prediction markets they see online, and ETH also supports the new tokenized stocks being launched by Robinhood. With the introduction of landmark legislative proposals such as the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act, this wave of innovation will only intensify. Ethereum, as a platform driving the future global economy, is increasingly gaining attention.

Ethereum was born for this moment from the very beginning. In terms of security, protection, and resilience, Ethereum is top-notch. The tenth anniversary of the genesis block is also to celebrate its unparalleled achievements in the fields of digital and traditional asset technology over the past decade.

• Economic Security: With over $100 billion in staked capital and more than 1 million validators, Ethereum has built a strong defense capability, effectively resisting attacks.
• Network Effect: Ethereum has the deepest liquidity, the most developers (twice as many as the next blockchain), and the richest application ecosystem. The EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) standard dominates the development of smart contracts, and all major stablecoins use Ethereum as their primary platform.
• Proven adaptability and continuous upgrades: Through complex upgrades such as the Merge (transition to proof-of-stake, reducing energy consumption by 99.95%) and Dencun (reducing gas fees by 90%), Ethereum has demonstrated resilience and ongoing improvement in its first decade without any downtime.
• Global neutrality and decentralization: Unlike other power-concentrated blockchains, Ethereum is not controlled by a single company or entity. Its over 1 million validating nodes are distributed across more than 80 countries/regions, with over 67% of the nodes operating outside the United States, demonstrating its antifragility and reliable neutrality.
• Institutional validation and adoption: Global institutions such as BlackRock, JPMorgan, Visa, and Franklin Templeton have begun utilizing Ethereum for tokenized assets, payments, and private equity investments, validating its security model and reliability. The total amount of tokenized real-world assets on Ethereum has exceeded $13 billion, with a monthly growth rate of up to 6.75%.

Despite the maturity of Ethereum technology and the ongoing consolidation of the digital asset infrastructure market, its economic potential remains in the early stages. The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies accounts for only 0.3% of global wealth, and tokenized securities represent only a small portion of the capital markets.

However, regulation is becoming increasingly clear, especially in the United States, which is accelerating its adoption of cryptocurrencies, shifting from resistance to embracing digital assets. The integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain has led to an unprecedented demand for trustless infrastructure: as AI agents begin to trade at machine speed, they will require machine trust. Ethereum is the only infrastructure prepared for an economic environment that requires algorithmic mutual trust.

For institutions, holding Ether (ETH) means owning the digital economic infrastructure at a price far below its eventual value. ETH can be used to pay for network transactions and serves as a means of value storage. Unlike Bitcoin, ETH can also generate cash flow through staking. Moreover, like stocks, the value of ETH will increase as the Ethereum platform becomes more popular. It combines the attributes of commodities, currencies, and capital assets into a unique and highly attractive asset.

As pointed out in the Trustware report, ETH, as economic bandwidth, ensures the expected issuance and trading of assets on the platform in the coming years, which will drive its value to grow strongly.

The Trust Machine has been built

The trust machine has been built. It operates continuously, self-improving, creating more value and attracting more users. The question is not whether to trust Ethereum, but whether to trust the digitalization of trust. If you believe, then the rationale for investing in a part of the future global economic infrastructure is self-evident.