New Week in Ethereum 2026-01-02

Week in Ethereum News

January 02, 2026

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Highlight of the Week

• Unleash Protocol hit by ~$3.9M governance exploit — attacker abused an unauthorized contract upgrade, highlighting ongoing DeFi governance risks.

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

• Holiday schedule:

  • Core developers agreed on a reduced meeting schedule for the holiday period, with several calls canceled between December 22, 2025, and January 1, 2026

• Scheduled Meetings:

  • All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #227 scheduled for January 5, 2026 (off-cycle meeting)

    • This is an additional meeting scheduled outside the regular cadence

  • All Core Devs - Consensus (ACDC) #172 scheduled for January 8, 2026

    • Agenda includes Glamsterdam upgrade discussions
    • Will cover progress on PeerDAS implementation

Research

• Wormholes and the cost of plausible deniability: Highlights a core L1 constraint: Ethereum’s 160-bit address space makes “plausibly deniable” burn→mint constructions vulnerable to address-collision attacks, creating a risk of inflation under naive designs.
• Integrated in-protocol distributed history and state storage: Suggests placing block contents into blobs with commitments in block headers, allowing nodes to verify the chain using headers + data availability sampling (DAS) + proofs.

Stuff for Developers

• Hardhat v3.1.2:Adds support for Solidity 0.8.32 / 0.8.33. Bumps EDR to 0.12.0-next.21, including updates like refreshed base mainnet EIP-1559 parameters and fixes related to Osaka blob-gas accounting.
• viem@2.43.4:Fixes getAbiItem handling for overloaded tuples with extra nested tuple components. Fixes getUserOperationHash calculation for EIP-7702 UserOperations. Adds CpChain network configuration.
• wagmi@3.1.4: Patch release alongside same-day bumps across the monorepo (e.g., @wagmi/core, @wagmi/vue, and @wagmi/connectors).

Security

• Unleash Protocol $3.9M governance/multisig exploit — attacker executed an unauthorized contract upgrade (governance failure/multisig compromise) enabling withdrawals; stolen funds were later routed through Tornado Cash.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

• 🚨 Lido at 24.45%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.

• Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):

  • Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
  • Consensus layer: Lighthouse 42.29%
  • Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality.

• Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe.

EIPs/Standards

• EIPs (Core, Networking, Interface)

  • EIP-7825 – Transaction Gas Limit Cap: Implemented in Geth v1.16.2 for the upcoming Fusaka fork, introducing a protocol-level cap on transaction gas usage to improve execution predictability and mitigate worst-case block scenarios.
  • EIP-7934 – RLP Execution Block Size Limit: Implemented in Geth v1.16.2 for Fusaka, defining an explicit RLP-encoded execution block size limit to reduce networking and execution risk from oversized blocks.

• ERCs (Application Layer)

  • EIP-7773 – ERC-7773: Updated with EIP status decisions from ACDE 226, reflecting recent core developer discussion and agreement on its progression.
  • EIP-7688 – ERC-7688: Updated to fix field naming and improve wording, reducing ambiguity for implementers and indexers.

Onchain Stats

• Fees (via ultrasound.money):

  • Gas: 0.0 to 0.6 gwei, 0.1 gwei average; zero net issuance at 12.2 gwei
  • 121.34k ETH net issuance this week

• ETHUSD: $4,241 – $4,487, currently $4,349, all time high $4,946

• ETHBTC: currently 0.038 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Regulations/Business/Tokens

• FASB crypto accounting agenda for 2026 — the U.S. accounting standard-setter plans to evaluate whether some crypto assets (including certain stablecoins) could qualify as cash equivalents and how to account for crypto transfers, which matters directly for corporate ETH/crypto treasury and reporting treatment.
• Trump Media to distribute a new digital token to shareholders — token-related corporate action announcement (token slated to launch in 2026, per report), notable as a mainstream issuer expanding into onchain/token distribution mechanics (even if not on Ethereum L1).

Upcoming Dates of Note

• Jan 7, 2026: BPO2 fork activation on Ethereum mainnet - increases blob count to target/max 14/21
• Jan 15-17, 2026: ETHDenver BUIDLWeek - applications and hackathon registrations open
• Feb 23-Mar 3, 2026: ETHDenver main event - world's largest web3 #BUIDLathon
• Q2 2026: Glamsterdam upgrade - targeting MEV fairness improvements