Analysis: Ethereum is currently in a "narrative vacuum," with institutional funding and privacy models becoming key variables for the future.

PANews reported on February 18th, citing Forbes, that industry insiders believe Ethereum is currently in a "gap period between narratives," where the market tends to price uncertainty when a clear long-term value logic is lacking. In recent years, the mainstream narrative has focused on scaling primarily occurring at Layer 2, with the mainnet maintaining security, decentralization, and a streamlined architecture. This path successfully attracted capital and development resources. However, the current market focus is shifting towards zero-knowledge technology and privacy capabilities returning to the foundational layer, leading to misaligned expectations among some investors who built valuation models based on the old approach. Complete on-chain transparency presents a real obstacle for institutional funds; large companies and funds are unwilling to have their financial statements and trading strategies tracked in real time. If Ethereum hopes to attract trillions of dollars in institutional funding, protocol-level privacy capabilities will become a key competitive variable. Furthermore, the expansion of the options market around spot ETFs is also changing Ethereum's price formation mechanism, including the increasing influence of covered call strategies and market maker hedging behavior.