Despite all the hype around the 2025 cycle, it doesn’t appear that institutions are fully buying into the “fundamentals-driven” story.
Take Ethereum, for example: down 11% in 2025, and it still saw strong on-chain activity.
As a reminder, the Fuska and Pecta upgrades reduced fees and eased congestion, with daily transactions even reaching a record 2.3 million, showing that the upgrades have started to produce results in the 2026 cycle so far.
Yet the big money doesn’t really show up.
Chain force, institutional hesitation
ETF flows saw outflows of nearly $664 million this week alone. In contrast, Chainlink’s (LINK) Grayscale ETF (GLNK) saw $4.05 million in inflows, marking a clear divergence.
Source: SoSoValue
To put that into perspective, the Ethereum (ETH) Grayscale Spot ETF (ETHE) saw $52 million in outflows during the same period. For layers 1, this type of divergence in institutional flows does not resemble short-term rotation.
On this basis, the SoSoValue data showed an even sharper contrast.
Chainlink’s ETF flows continue to outpace those of Dogecoin (DOGE), whose net inflows still lag behind LINK even though DOGE’s market cap is nearly 3x larger.
Technically, this suggests that the ETF capital rotating in Chainlink is not continuing short-term movements. Instead, it begs the question: Is LINK one of the few large-cap assets still experiencing a fundamentals-driven institutional rally?
Chainlink strives to maintain DeFi dominance as rivalry intensifies
The 2025 cycle has set the stage for bringing DeFi back to the mainstream.
Data from DeFiLlama at the time of publication showed that the total value locked (TVL) across all Layer 1s climbed to $170 billion, reclaiming the level for the first time since losing it after the 2022 bear market, pointing to a return of on-chain liquidity.
Naturally, this growth has spread to key sectors such as stablecoins, RWA and AI.
Enter Chainlink, which is now part of the KRW Global Stablecoin Alliance (GAKS), placing it at the center of Korea’s stablecoin expansion.
Source: DeFiLlama
Simply put, Chainlink is not out of the DeFi race.
By integrating with global stablecoins (the backbone of the DeFi rails), it clearly reinforces LINK’s core principles of privacy, compliance and interoperability, positioning the network as a key infrastructure player.
Meanwhile, the network’s total value secured (TVS) reached a record $70 billion in Q4 2025, reflecting the total assets powered by Chainlink’s oracles and marking a clear sign of its real-world adoption, trust, and usage.
Under these conditions, it is not surprising that the interest of institutions is increasing. In this context, Chainlink’s ETF flows appear less speculative and more fundamentally focused, making LINK a clearly distinctive player among its competitors.
Final Thoughts
- While Ethereum and Dogecoin spot ETFs have seen significant outflows, Chainlink continues to attract inflows, indicating that institutional capital favors LINK over other large-cap assets.
- With TVS reaching $70 billion, global stablecoin integration, and key infrastructure strengths, Chainlink is cementing its role as a leading DeFi player.
