January 2026 marked a historic turning point for Ethereum. This wasn't just another speculative frenzy, but rather a paradigm shift by traditional financial institutions, moving from a wait-and-see approach to a proactive one. When JPMorgan Chase launched a $100 million money market fund on the public blockchain, when Fidelity issued a stablecoin on its mainnet, and when a consortium of 12 European banks chose Ethereum as the sole underlying layer for their Euro stablecoin—we witnessed not a victory for cryptocurrencies, but the birth of a new type of financial infrastructure.
I. The Silent Infrastructure Revolution
From Edge Experimentation to Core Architecture