DAT’s – What are they good for? (onchain)

When i, in the start of July invested my hard earned money in a recently established ETH DAT, none of my money was onchain. In fact it had never been onchain and i had no plans for that to change. My investment was to get exposure to eth through the DAT, an asset i knew next to nothing about except: crypto=UP FAST + Blockchain good wow. That was about to change..

Since 20% of my port now was exposed indirectly to ETH, i forced myself to atleast try to understand. And boy was i in for a ride..

Weekly updates on eth aquired, new partnerships with onchain players, Staking, stablecoins, TVL etc. All of it, i understood: NADA COMPENDRE!

But what it did, was something special, it opened my eyes. This asset i knew next to nothing about was not just "the next Bitcoin moonshot go sky boom wow!" like my apeminded naive retail investor brain thesis. It was an economy. I can still picture myself sitting in my 14 year old office chair with no wheels (fallen off from abuse), and reading about 'Staking'. "This highly volatile crypto asset pays me interest from securing its network, and all i have to do is hold it in a staking form.. wow" i remember thinking.

My Argument is very simple, altough alot of these DATS will eventually fail/fade out/pivot from their original strategy. One thing they have already suceeded in is: getting Retail Retards (Like yours truly), to be curious. And it shows, we almost hit an ath in monthly active addresses in august according to gemini 19.45 MILLION active addresses was recorded in the month of august 2025. Closest we've come to the ATH's of 2021 with 20 million+. I myself is a living example of this argument.

My hope for the future of the ETH + DAT relationships is that they will do more than just Aquire/Stake and further their relationships to important onchain partner. Of course in the short term pumping our bags is always neat, but for the long term getting people onchain using this beautiful ecosystem and realizing the use for it. Is what will bring us prosperity in the end.

TLDR: DAT's Pump our bags, but most importantly bring awareness of the uses of ETH, i myself is a DAT RETARD RETAIL investor turned onchain obeyer.

Sincerely Fatkid13yrsold, former Retard Retailer turned Onchain Obeyer and Believer in somETHing.