Behind the 450% stock price surge: Will Lubin’s Ethereum treasury trigger a corporate domino effect?

Ethereum's corporate treasury strategy: Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin's involvement with SharpLink Gaming to lead a $425M Ethereum treasury strategy has sparked a 450% stock surge, mirroring Michael Saylor's Bitcoin vault approach but with active yield generation through staking.
Active vs. passive vaults: Unlike Bitcoin's passive holding strategy, Ethereum's treasury leverages staking (earning ~2% annually) and DeFi protocols for additional yield, transforming treasuries into active network participants.
Market impact: SharpLink's stock soared 17x in days, reflecting investor confidence in ETH's potential as an institutional asset, with the $425M pledge representing 0.25% of Ethereum's ICO-era supply.
Institutional momentum: Ethereum ETFs recorded 16 straight days of inflows ($815M over 20 days), with BlackRock accumulating $500M+ in ETH, signaling growing institutional adoption.
Regulatory tailwinds: Stablecoin legislation and Circle's successful IPO (160% above listing price) highlight Wall Street's crypto infrastructure appetite, creating favorable conditions for Ethereum's institutional embrace.
Potential domino effect: If SharpLink's ETH vault succeeds, it could catalyze broader corporate adoption, accelerating Ethereum's shift from speculative tech to financial infrastructure.

Key takeaway: Lubin's move marks Ethereum's maturation, combining treasury innovation, ETF inflows, and regulatory clarity to position ETH for institutional-scale adoption.

By Prathik Desai

Compiled by: Block unicorn

Preface

Two weeks ago, Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys founder and CEO Joe Lubin announced that he would serve as chairman of SharpLink Gaming’s board of directors and lead its $425 million Ethereum treasury strategy.

The move adds a new chapter to the revival of ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, after it languished below $3,000 for more than four months.

The move mirrors the strategy popularized by Michael Saylor, whose Bitcoin-focused financial strategy has inspired a host of public companies to participate in Bitcoin vault construction.

In this article, we analyze whether this is one of the best opportunities for Ethereum’s revival.

Ethereum Vault

When SharpLink Gaming announced it was raising funds to build an Ethereum vault, the market’s reaction was swift and clear.

Its stock price skyrocketed more than 450% in one day, from $6.63 per share to over $35. In five trading days, the stock price soared more than 17 times from $6.63. Even after the correction, it is still trading more than 3 times higher than when the rally began.

What is driving this rise?

Lubin is believed to be able to help SharpLink replicate the success Saylor achieved at Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy).

Ethereum allows Lubin to do at least one thing better than Bitcoin Vault: build an active ETH vault that not only stores value like Bitcoin does, but also creates more value.

How to do it?

Active Treasury Theory

The difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum vault strategies is significant. The logic of Bitcoin vault is simple: buy Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin, and enjoy the price appreciation. This approach is elegant and simple, but it is inherently passive.

Ethereum’s treasury strategy is different from Bitcoin’s: most ETH tokens will be used for staking, creating what Ethereum core developer Eric Conner describes as “high-beta, yield-generating ETH leverage.”

Staking strategies will transform enterprise treasuries from static vaults into active participants in network security.

Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings do not generate any native returns, but SharpLink’s staked ETH will earn at least 2% per year while enhancing Ethereum’s consensus mechanism.

Conner also mentioned the “flywheel effect” as a key advantage of the ETH vault.

A business can raise cash at a discount to net asset value, buy and stake ETH, and then if the stock trades above the value of each ETH, raise more cash and repeat the process. This is a classic Strategy cycle, but its super-profitability is something that Bitcoin Vault cannot replicate.

The advantages go far beyond basic staking.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols offer additional yield strategies through lending, liquidity provision, and complex financial instruments that do not exist in the Bitcoin ecosystem. SharpLink is backed by DeFi-savvy firms such as ParaFi Capital and Galaxy Digital, demonstrating that they understand the potential.

ETH and BTC vaults

Ethereum’s initial coin offering (ICO) raised $18 million in 2014. ETH was priced between $0.30 and $0.40 at the time, laying the foundation for the Ethereum ecosystem, which is now valued at over $320 billion.

The $425 million SharpLink has pledged is more than 20 times the amount raised in the ICO, enough to acquire more than 150,000 ETH at current prices. But this still only represents 0.25% of the 60 million ETH sold during the ICO.

The 2014 ICO laid the foundation for Ethereum. The current treasury strategy may validate its maturity as an institutional asset and help build the financial infrastructure of the next decade.

Institutional boom

In addition to the treasury strategy, Ethereum ETFs have also continued to record inflows in institutional channels over the past two weeks.

As of June 9, the Ethereum ETF has recorded net inflows for 16 consecutive trading days, the second longest streak since its approval in July 2024.

The past two weeks saw inflows of $281 million and $285 million, respectively, making it the Ethereum ETF’s best two weeks in four months.

BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, has accumulated more than $500 million worth of ETH in 11 trading days. Its ETHA ETF now manages nearly $4 billion in assets.

“ETH ETFs have seen inflows of $815 million over the past 20 days, with net inflows turning positive for the year at $658 million,” Bernstein analysts noted in recent research.

CoinShares said seven consecutive weeks of $1.5 billion in ETF inflows marked a "significant recovery in investor sentiment."

Ethereum-based products now account for 10.5% of total crypto ETP assets under management.

“The narrative around value accumulation in public blockchain networks is at a critical inflection point,” and this is “starting to be reflected in investor interest in ETH ETF inflows,” Bernstein said.

Our View

Lubin’s move with SharpLink not only has direct financial implications, but also marks Ethereum’s evolution from speculative technology to important financial infrastructure.

When payment giants like Visa and Mastercard develop stablecoin strategies, when Coinbase builds merchant payment systems, and when Robinhood plans to launch tokenized assets — they are essentially betting on Ethereum’s orbit.

This may be what Bernstein calls a “critical inflection point,” the moment when blockchain networks shift.

The timing seems deliberate.

As stablecoin legislation advances in Congress and regulatory clarity emerges, institutional investors finally have the framework they need to confidently allocate. This week, Circle's successful IPO, which closed 160% higher than its listing price, showed Wall Street's enthusiasm for crypto infrastructure investment.

For Ethereum, the convergence of corporate treasury adoption, institutional ETF inflows, and regulatory clarity has created conditions that did not exist in previous cycles.

If SharpLink’s experiment is successful, it could trigger a “domino effect” of enterprise adoption, just as Saylor’s Strategy did with Bitcoin. Given that Bitcoin’s similar risk model has proven to be manageable, Ethereum’s adoption could be faster and larger.

Beyond enterprise adoption, if BlackRock continues to accumulate and regulatory clarity solidifies as expected, Lubin’s move could be remembered as Ethereum’s first step toward an institutional chapter.