What is ETH?

ETH is the native asset of the Ethereum blockchain. Chris Berniski (May 2026) called it the most financially valuable product of Ethereum. He noted that if ETH is 95% dominant in DeFi, it is valued as money; if 65% dominant, as a smart contract chain. Ryan Sean Adams (May 2026) said a holder is on track to hit 5% of all ETH by September, earning ~$300M/year from staking. In June 2026, Adams said the same holder reached 4.6% in 11 months from zero; reaching 13% (needed for consensus failure) would require a 2.5x increase from a $10B position. In July 2026, Adams reported the holder at 4.8% of supply (5.77M ETH), 96% toward a 5% goal, achieved in a year during a bear market. David Hoffman (Jul 2026) said Ethereum gets 0.15% for data availability. Adams (Jul 2026) argued Ethereum should adopt its largest roll-ups so a critical bug in Arbitrum, Base, or Robin Hood chain triggers an L1 fork, and stated fees are no longer a concern.