Ethereum has become a high-value financial platform. 1. Since 2021, the number of contract deployments on Ethereum has declined, while the total value locked (TVL) of the ecosystem has continued to rise. Contract deployments measure the number of new smart contracts launched on Ethereum and can serve as an indicator of developer activity and ecosystem experimentation. Deployments peaked at 5.9 million in Q2 2021 but subsequently declined by 95%, reaching only 310,000 by Q3 2025. During the same period, the ecosystem TVL grew from $120 billion to $379 billion. This inverse relationship suggests that funds are concentrated in mature DeFi areas rather than emerging applications. 2. Level 2 payments and alternatives to Level 1 payments have absorbed a variety of experimental applications and captured the breakthrough applications of this market cycle. The low cost and high transaction processing speed (TPS) of Level 2 payments and alternatives to Level 1 payments (such as Base and Solana) make them a rational choice for developers building new applications. Several outstanding applications have emerged on these chains: Since January 2024, @pumpdotfun on Solana has generated $866 million in transaction fees, while the total value locked (TVL) of the @solana ecosystem has grown from $4.3 billion to $37.3 billion. During the same period, @AerodromeFi on Base generated $408 million in transaction fees, and the TVL of the Base ecosystem grew from $425 million to $11.7 billion. The Ethereum L1 layer has retained established DeFi projects, while the L2 layer and alternative L1 layers have attracted the attention of new application developers. 3⃣ Historical patterns suggest a strong correlation between contract deployments and ecosystem TVL growth—innovations that re-enable the Ethereum L1 layer may further boost TVL. The peak of 5.9 million deployments in Q2 2021 predates the all-time high for Ethereum ecosystem TVL later that year. This correlation also exists on secondary blockchains: @base completed 167.5 million contract deployments in Q2 2025, and its total value locked (TVL) has since grown to $11.7 billion. Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade in December is expected to reduce costs and increase transactions per second (TPS), thus bringing experimental activity back to the primary blockchain (L1). If Ethereum can regain even a small fraction of the deployment activity on chains like Base and Solana, it could potentially accelerate TVL growth on primary blockchains again.