Gate Research Institute: Ethereum Staking Demand Rebounds | Tokenized Stock Asset Scale Reaches New High

Cryptocurrency Market Overview

• BTC (+0.02% | Current price 88,660 USDT): BTC has shown weak range-bound oscillation over the past day, with prices repeatedly consolidating around $88,000–$89,000, with limited overall volatility. Short-term moving averages MA5 and MA10 have multiple times merged and crossed with MA30, indicating that the market direction remains unclear, and the short-term trend favors sideways consolidation. Although MACD briefly turned red, momentum amplification is limited, with green and red bars alternating frequently, and oscillating near the zero line, reflecting cautious sentiment among bulls and bears. Structurally, a confirmed breakout above the $89,500–$90,000 range with increased volume could validate a continued short-term rebound; if prices fall back and break below $88,000 support, attention should be paid to the risk of testing the $87,000 support zone.
• ETH (+0.02% | Current price 2,980 USDT): ETH maintains a relatively stable consolidation pattern within the day, trading around $2,950–$3,000, performing slightly better than BTC. Regarding moving averages, MA5 and MA10 have shown slight upward movement, but MA30 has not yet formed a clear trend support, indicating that short-term rebound momentum still needs further confirmation. MACD is slightly bullish near the zero line, with DIFF and DEA slightly diverging but with limited strength, and no clear trend breakout signals yet. If ETH can sustain above the $3,000 level and retest the $3,050 resistance, an upward continuation is likely; conversely, if it falls below $2,950, a short-term retest of the $2,900 and $2,880 support zones may occur.
• Altcoins: The Fear & Greed Index is currently at 21, still in the “Extreme Fear” zone, slightly lower than yesterday and last week, indicating that despite some rebound in prices, investor confidence remains slow to recover. The market risk appetite has not yet significantly improved, and short-term trends remain susceptible to emotional fluctuations.
• Macro: As of December 30, the S&P 500 index fell 0.14% to 6,896.24 points; the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.20% to 48,367.06 points; the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.24% to 23,419.08 points. As of 10:15 AM UTC+8 on December 31, spot gold is priced at $4,366 per ounce, down 0.63% within 24 hours.

Hot Tokens in the Market

( ELIZAOS elizaOS (+48.41%, Market Cap $44.3 million)

According to Gate data, the current price of ELIZAOS token is $0.005757, up approximately 48.41% in 24 hours. CELIZAOS is an application-layer project built around the Web3 intelligent agent and proxy interaction ecosystem, with the core goal of enabling users to deploy, manage, and invoke autonomous on-chain and off-chain intelligent agents through the Agent Framework and directive coordination mechanisms. The project emphasizes “agent orchestration,” “composable strategies,” and “cross-scenario invocation,” with elizaOS Framework as the underlying development platform, supporting applications such as prediction markets, automated trading, information scraping, and strategy execution through multi-agent collaboration and expandable task modules.

The recent surge in ELIZAOS is likely driven by a resonance of technical developments and narrative sentiment, amplifying market emotions. On one hand, the project team has recently announced key progress, including completing elizaOS Framework development, officially migrating from ai16z to the independent elizaOS brand system, and restarting testing activities around proxy prediction markets and strategy execution scenarios, accelerating the realization of “intelligent agent tradable applications” narrative expectations. On the other hand, the market has recently revived interest in “Crypto × AI Agents,” especially amid expectations of a trading cycle in Q1 2026 and a revival of intelligent agent narratives. As a representative in this sector with a market cap of only $44.3 million, ELIZAOS has higher resilience and capital leverage, combined with renewed attention on-chain and within the community, resulting in a trend-level volume increase.

CC Canton Network (+20.34%, Market Cap $5.439 billion)

According to Gate data, the current price of CC token is $0.14896, up 20.34% in 24 hours. Canton Network is an institutional-grade financial blockchain network led by Digital Asset, positioned as an “interoperable financial settlement layer” for regulated markets. Its core goal is to provide banks, custodians, clearinghouses, and large asset managers with a foundational infrastructure featuring privacy protection, permission control, and cross-chain composability.

The significant rise in CC is likely driven by expectations reinforced by the implementation of real-world asset tokenization narratives and progress in institutional collaborations. Recently, Canton Network completed version 3.4 upgrade, with approximately 600 validator nodes smoothly migrated, focusing on enhancing scalability, developer experience, and institutional throughput. Official data shows the network processes over $350 billion daily on-chain, laying a foundation for sustainable large-scale financial infrastructure. Additionally, multiple core institutional partnerships have catalyzed market sentiment, including DTCC and Digital Asset announcing support for tokenized government bonds (USTs) on Canton by 2026, enabling potential cross-asset settlement and global collateral management.

RECALL Recall (+24.47%, Market Cap $99.87 million)

According to Gate data, RECALL token is currently priced at $0.11944, up approximately 24.47% in 24 hours. Recall is an application-layer protocol designed for AI trading agents and model evaluation scenarios, positioned as “the public benchmark layer for AI trading capability.” Through real fund trading, traceable performance records, and open competition mechanisms, it evaluates the effectiveness of various language models (LLMs) and visual large models (VLMs) in actual trading decision-making.

The recent rise of RECALL is mainly driven by the upgrade of model trading competitions and accelerated application deployment. Recently, Recall launched real ETH trading competitions involving models like GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4.5, Grok-4, with a comparison between “image-only” and “full market data,” supported by a $15,000 reward pool to attract traffic and capital inflow. Previously, in the HyperliquidX proxy challenge, the best return reached +135.45%, reinforcing market expectations of “feasible real trading by AI.” In the context of rising AI × Crypto track and high-frequency LLM iterations, RECALL, as one of the few projects with real trading verification and capability ranking mechanisms, is viewed as a structural beneficiary.

Alpha Insights

Tokenized stock assets reach new highs in market cap, with structural growth momentum emerging

According to Token Terminal data, the total market cap of tokenized stocks has surpassed $1.2 billion, a new all-time high, reflecting the accelerating migration of traditional financial assets onto the blockchain. Current incremental capital mainly flows into tokenized versions of tech giants and leading assets such as TSLA, AAPL, NVDA, benefiting from advantages like 24-hour trading, lower cross-border investment barriers, and ease of secondary market transactions, continuously attracting crypto users and overseas investors. Meanwhile, on-chain data shows that trading depth and custody scale are expanding in tandem, with market structure exhibiting positive feedback between capital and liquidity.

On a macro level, the recent strength in tokenized assets indicates that the “on-chain securitization” and “real-world asset on-chain (RWA)” pathways are accelerating. The growth logic is driven not only by speculative sentiment but also by clearer regulatory environments, improved compliant custody and clearing infrastructure, and faster institutional product deployment. In the short term, the record-high market cap may trigger an expansion cycle in the on-chain securities trading ecosystem; in the medium to long term, if regulatory support and cross-chain liquidity solutions continue to evolve, tokenized stocks could become a vital bridge connecting crypto and traditional capital markets, potentially reshaping existing trading and settlement systems.

Ethereum’s structural consolidation nears completion, with a key window expected in 2026 for direction choice

According to Matrixport data, during the previous cycle, Ethereum attracted significant incremental capital driven by narratives of “smart contract platform expansion” and “programmable currency,” with prices surging in 2020–2021, and market expectations raised to $10,000. However, the trend did not sustain, and ETH retreated from highs into long-term consolidation, maintaining a pattern within a large triangle structure. Attempts to break out of the range twice failed, quickly reverting to oscillation, indicating insufficient trend momentum and a lack of consensus on direction.

Structurally, the current triangle is converging sharply, with decreasing volatility and prices approaching the end of the pattern. Before a confirmed breakout, ETH is likely to remain in a range-bound state, with a defensive strategy and event-driven trading as primary approaches. Once the long-term consolidation completes, 2026 could be a critical period for ETH to choose its direction: a breakout could initiate a new trend cycle; a confirmed breakdown would require attention to market sentiment decline and fundamental reassessment, with ongoing monitoring of trading structure, on-chain activity, and narrative recovery to identify potential trend reversals.

Ethereum staking demand warms up, with a significant rebound in validator queue

Ethereum validator queue has expanded markedly after six months, now nearly twice the size of the exit queue, indicating a clear revival in staking demand. On-chain data shows that incremental staking is mainly driven by institutions like BitMine, which are reallocating ETH staking assets to earn stable yields and on-chain native returns. Additionally, Pectra’s upgrade, which improves activation speed and staking efficiency, may be a key driver for attracting new validators. Structurally, accelerated entry combined with slower exits supports network security and decentralization, positively impacting staking yields and active deposits in the short term.

In the medium term, Pectra’s performance improvements and economic model optimizations strengthen ecosystem expansion, enhancing ETH’s valuation as a “yield asset,” with institutional allocation willingness likely to persist. However, rapid accumulation in the validator queue could lengthen activation cycles and temporarily suppress staking yields; in macro or sentiment downturns, mass withdrawals could trigger liquidity volatility. Overall, changes in validator queue structure reflect marginal improvements in Ethereum’s fundamentals from a capital perspective, but whether the trend continues depends on the realization of upgrade benefits in actual data and market risk appetite.

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