Ethereum Quietly Outperformed Bitcoin Over the Past Year

▲ Ethereum (ETH) ©Dasol Ko

While the virtual asset market's attention has been entirely focused on the leading cryptocurrency, a coin that is quietly dominating market returns and preparing for the next bull run is drawing investors' attention.

According to the investment media The Motley Fool on April 20 (local time), Ethereum (ETH) rose by 48% over the past 12 months, while Bitcoin (BTC) fell by approximately 11%. This enormous disparity in returns quietly unfolded while Ethereum's price was on a downtrend, out of the public spotlight, after a terrible flash crash on October 10, 2025.

The media cited continuous technical upgrades, not yet reflected in the price, as the key reason why Ethereum was able to outperform Bitcoin. The Ethereum blockchain is continuously evolving, and through the Pectra upgrade in May 2025, it expanded the data processing capacity of Layer 2 networks and fully introduced account abstraction, which functions like smart contract wallets.

Furthermore, in December, the Pusaka upgrade was successfully launched, introducing a new data availability sampling system called PeerDAS. Thanks to these series of scalability improvements, Ethereum's network gas fees have dropped by 83% compared to just 12 months ago, and a staggering 98% compared to three years ago, significantly enhancing its practical usability.

The scale of real capital flowing into the ecosystem is also noticeably increasing, proving its robust fundamentals. The amount of assets deposited in the decentralized finance ecosystem, which was around $45 billion 12 months ago, has significantly grown to $56 billion as of April 14 this year. As more capital is deposited to generate returns, new decentralized application development is funded, and the dramatically lowered fee environment creates a powerful virtuous cycle that attracts more projects and on-chain capital.

Ethereum is facing the Glamsterdam upgrade in the first half of this year and the Hegota upgrade in the second half, signaling explosive scalability improvements such as transaction parallel processing. The media positively predicted that despite its fundamentals becoming incomparably stronger than 12 months ago, the price has not yet fully reflected this, and once this huge gap begins to narrow, Ethereum will significantly outperform Bitcoin by an even wider margin.

*Disclaimer: This article is for investment reference only, and we are not responsible for investment losses based on it. The content should be interpreted for informational purposes only.*