How Tezos’ EVM Became One of the Success Stories of 2025
The year 2025 will be remembered as a defining chapter for Layer 2 solutions. As Ethereum’s mainnet continued to face congestion and high fees, the race to build scalable, cost-effective L2 infrastructure intensified. Amid this crowded landscape, one project quietly emerged as a breakout success story: Etherlink, the EVM-compatible Layer 2 powered by Tezos SmartRollUp technology.
What sets Etherlink apart from the growing list of rollups isn’t only performance, it’s architecture. Etherlink operates as a non-custodial rollup, meaning users retain full control of their assets without relying on trusted intermediaries. The chain functions as a direct extension of Tezos Layer 1, inheriting its security guarantees rather than building a separate trust model. For users weary of exploits and custodial risks that plagued other L2s throughout the year, this distinction matters.
In January 2025, Etherlink’s total value locked (TVL) stood at a modest $1.46 million. By November, that figure had soared past $82.73 million, a staggering 5566% increase. Behind the numbers lies a story of strategic upgrades, blue-chip protocol integrations, a promising gaming ecosystem, and an incentive program that catalyzed an entire community into action.
The Numbers That Matter
https://defillama.com/chain/etherlink?chainFees=true&stablecoinsMcap=false
The 5566% TVL growth is not just a headline, it’s a signal that Etherlink has found product-market fit in a highly competitive space.
To put this into perspective, most L2 solutions struggled to maintain momentum in 2025 as market conditions fluctuated and user attention fragmented across dozens of competing chains. Etherlink, however, charted a different course. Starting the year as a relatively unknown player, it steadily climbed the ranks, driven by a combination of technical excellence and ecosystem development.
By Q3 2025, Messari’s “State of Tezos” report identified Etherlink as the primary driver of growth within the Tezos ecosystem. The L2 was handling the majority of transactions and fees, effectively becoming the network’s main execution layer. The TVL trajectory, from $1.46M to over $20M by mid-year, then $60M by September, and finally $82.73M by November, reflects sustained, organic growth rather than speculative spikes.
Governance Matters Too: The Farfadet Effect
https://governance.etherlink.com/
None of this happens without serious technical work. In 2025, Etherlink rolled out several major upgrades: Calypso, Dionysus, Ebisu, and Farfadet, each one proposed, debated, and voted into existence by Tezos L1 bakers. No centralized calls. No foundation mandates. When Farfadet went live in December, it’s because the people (bakers) actually running the infrastructure reviewed the code and decided it was ready. That’s a level of decentralized oversight most L2s simply don’t have; most still rely on centralized multisigs to push changes through.
Farfadet was the big one. It nearly doubled network capacity, pushing Etherlink past 1,000 native transfers per second at minimal cost. But throughput was only part of it. The upgrade also introduced instant confirmations, critical for DeFi traders and gamers who can’t afford to wait on blockchain latency.
On the compatibility front, the team hit another milestone: activating a new EVM version just days after an Ethereum hard fork. That kind of synchronization signals maturity. Etherlink isn’t lagging behind; it’s running in sync.
DeFi Integrations: Blue-Chip Meets Native Innovation
Technical infrastructure means little without applications. In 2025, Etherlink secured integrations with some of the most respected names in DeFi:
Curve Finance: The go-to platform for stablecoin swaps, essential for any serious DeFi ecosystem.
Uniswap v3 (Oku): The gold standard of decentralized exchanges, bringing deep liquidity and a familiar UX to Etherlink users.
Morpho: A lending protocol optimizer that enhances capital efficiency.
Gearbox Protocol: Offering leveraged strategies with attractive yields on USDC.
But Etherlink’s DeFi story isn’t just about porting established protocols. Native applications have emerged that push the boundaries of what’s possible on an L2.
Superlend became a DeFi cornerstone on Etherlink: lending markets, vaults, and one of Apple Farm’s founding partners from day one. For yield or leverage, it’s the default.
Hanji raised the bar further with a fully on-chain central limit order book (CLOB), a model most L2s can’t touch due to throughput limits. Tighter spreads, precise execution, every order recorded on-chain. Most chains talk about supporting order books someday. Etherlink already does.
Institutions Arrive: RWAs Go Live on Etherlink
DeFi and gaming dominated headlines, but a wave of institutional launches signaled that Etherlink’s ambitions extend far beyond crypto-native use cases.
Spiko became one of the first regulated asset managers on Etherlink, deploying its U.S. and E.U. T-Bills Money Market Funds, over $165 million in AUM, UCITS-compliant, fully self-custodial. Midas followed with mMEV and mRe7YIELD, institutional-grade DeFi strategies accessible through a single on-chain transaction. No intermediaries, no jurisdictional headaches.
And then there’s Uranium.io, the world’s first marketplace for trading actual physical uranium on-chain. Not derivatives. Not synthetics. Real uranium, tokenized and tradeable. It sounds like a thought experiment until you see it working for real.
The pattern? Regulated funds, institutional strategies, and physical commodities, all shipping on Etherlink. RWA tokenization has been the industry’s white whale for years. Most projects stay stuck in pilots and press releases. These actually launched. And 2026 is shaping up to bring even more.
Gaming Ecosystem Expansion
While DeFi drove TVL, gaming drove users. By year’s end, Etherlink had attracted thousands of unique gaming users, a clear sign that the platform’s appeal extends well beyond financial applications. The biggest announcement came with Reaper Actual, a AAA open-world extraction shooter developed by Distinct Possibility Studios. Backed by $30.5 million in funding, Reaper Actual represents the kind of high production value gaming experience that Web3 has long promised but rarely delivered. The game leverages Etherlink’s infrastructure for its blockchain-enabled features, including asset ownership and in-game economies.
On the casual side, titles like SugarMatch from Sugarverse and Apple Ville are bringing a different flavor to the ecosystem, proving that on-chain gaming isn’t just about AAA budgets, but also fun, accessible experiences that onboard everyday players.
Gaming on Etherlink also benefited from the same technical upgrades that powered DeFi. Instant confirmations and low fees are key features for gaming, where user experience cannot tolerate blockchain latency.
Apple Farm: The Catalyst
Growth doesn’t happen by accident. Etherlink’s explosive year was catalyzed by Apple Farm, a $3 million incentive program designed to bootstrap ecosystem activity.
Launched at ETHDenver in early 2025, Apple Farm introduced an innovative points-based system where users earned “Apples” for participating in DeFi activities, trading, lending, providing liquidity. Season 1 exceeded expectations, attracting thousands of users and generating over $47 million in TVL while distributing $3 million in XTZ rewards.
Season 2, launched in July 2025, built on this momentum with expanded protocol partnerships and refined reward mechanics. The introduction of applstXTZ (a reward token linked to stXTZ earning ~ 9% APY) meant that vesting rewards weren’t idle capital but continued generating yield. This turned a simple incentive program into a flywheel for sustained engagement.
Apple Farm’s founding partners, Superlend, Hanji, and IguanaDEX, were later joined by Curve, Gearbox, and others, creating a rich menu of opportunities for users to earn while contributing to ecosystem growth.
2025 was the warm-up. 2026 is the main event
Etherlink’s 2025 performance is more than a success story, it’s validation of a different approach to Layer 2 design. By building a non-custodial rollup that extends Tezos Layer 1 rather than merely sitting on top of it, Etherlink offers something increasingly rare: an L2 where security isn’t a marketing claim but an inherited property of the underlying chain. Add validator governance to the mix, where every upgrade passes through the same bakers who secure millions in staked assets, and you get a rollup with actual decentralization, not just decentralization theater.
The ecosystem that emerged tells its own story. Superlend and Hanji prove that native DeFi can thrive alongside established protocols. Uranium.io proves that real-world assets aren’t just a roadmap bullet point. Reaper Actual proves that serious gaming studios see something worth building on. Etherlink has earned its place among the top-tier EVM-compatible L2s.
Now, with the Tezos X roadmap promising better latency, tighter composability, and deeper cross-layer integration, 2026 has a real runway. Etherlink spent 2025 proving it belongs in the L2 conversation. Next year, it might start leading it.
Etherlink’s Explosive Year: 5566% TVL Growth was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.