New Week in Ethereum 2025-11-21

Week in Ethereum News

November 21, 2025

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Highlight of the Week

• The Ethereum Foundation unveiled its new cross-Layer-2 interoperability initiative on 18 Nov 2025 — simplifying how users and applications move assets and data between roll-ups and the main chain.

Eth R&D & Protocol Calls

• All Core Devs – Execution (ACDE) #225 on GitHub (scheduled 20 Nov 2025): Meeting was cancelled, rescheduled to 4 Dec 2025.

Layer 1

• State Locks as Proposer Commitments was published on ethresear.ch, exploring a new mechanism for proposer commitments in the execution layer.

• Dynamic Penalties for ePBS discussing potential penalty mechanisms for the upcoming enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation.

• State growth scenarios and the impact of repricings analyzing different scenarios for Ethereum state growth and how various repricing proposals might affect it.

Research

• Emergent-consensus without a chain: Explores whether global linear history is necessary, proposing a topology-driven, emergence-based consensus model and examining implications for validator coordination, ordering guarantees, and fault-tolerance boundaries.

Stuff for Developers

• Foundry released a nightly update with minor fixes including corrected comments for Git functions and optimizations for Anvil's internal data handling.

Security

• Cloudflare experienced a major outage on November 20 that took down 20% of the web for 3 hours, including crypto exchanges and Twitter. While blockchain networks continued to operate, many front-end interfaces were inaccessible, highlighting the irony of decentralized protocols relying on centralized infrastructure.

Ecosystem

• The EIP-7928 Breakout #7 meeting was held on November 19, continuing discussions on this Ethereum Improvement Proposal.

• A new discussion was started regarding an open question to core developers about EIP-7932, seeking clarification on implementation details.

Notable at app layer

• Stream Finance experienced a catastrophic failure on November 18, with $93 million vanishing and their stablecoin xUSD crashing 77%. The collapse followed October warnings about Stream's 4x leverage and recursive loops, resulting in $285 million in exposure being unwound. While Trevee (a related protocol) recovered through aggressive action, most depositors face near-total losses.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

• 🚨 Lido at 23.94%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.

• Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):

  • Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%

  • Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~42.71% & Prysm ~30.91%

  • Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality.

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

Client Releases

• Consensus layer:

  • Lighthouse v8.0.1: A hot-fix release correcting several bugs in the v8.0.0 rollout (including removal of checkpoint-server blob downloads pre-Fulu fork, a fix for a custody-context race condition causing panics, and preventing unnecessary pre-fork state advances).

EIPs/Standards

• EIPs (Core, Networking, Interface):

  • EIP-7979(Call and Return Opcodes for the EVM): Historical and technical updates

  • EIP-7723(Network Upgrade Inclusion Stages): Update to reflect that execution-spec-tests no longer accepts PRs

  • Native Rollups EIP: New proposal for native rollup support

  • Falcon Precompile EIP: New proposal for Falcon cryptographic support

• ERCs (Application Layer):

  • EIP-7557(Block-level Warming with fair cost savings): Moved to stagnant status

  • EIP-7877(Enhanced RETURN opcodes): Moved to stagnant status

Onchain Stats

• Fees (via ultrasound.money):

  • Gas: 0.0 to 16.8 gwei, 0.5 gwei average; zero net issuance at 16.2 gwei

  • 18.02 ETH net issuance this week

• ETHUSD: $2,680 – $3,237, currently $2,760, all-time high $4,946

• ETHBTC: currently 0.032 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Enterprise

• Ethereum's Fusaka Upgrade Signals New Era for Value Accrual: Fidelity Digital Assets reports that the upcoming Fusaka upgrade marks a strategic turn for the blockchain, aligning protocol development with economic intent.

• Privacy-Focused Aztec Network's Ignition Chain Launches on Ethereum: Aztec Network launched its Ignition Chain, becoming the first fully decentralized Layer 2 protocol on Ethereum's mainnet with privacy features.

Regulation/Business/Tokens

• Ether Treasury Firm FG Nexus Unloads Nearly 11K ETH: FG Nexus sold ETH to fund share buybacks, following a similar move by ETHZilla which sold $40 million in tokens for buybacks.

• BitMine Immersion Acquires $173M in Ether: The company made a significant ETH purchase amid market weakness, with BitMine chairman suggesting a wounded market maker could be scaling back operations.

• Bitcoin ETFs Have Bled a Record $3.79B in November: U.S.-listed spot BTC and ETH ETFs are seeing record outflows this month.

Job Postings

• P2P Networking Intern - Ethereum Foundation (Remote)

• Head of Finance - OP Labs (New York)

• zkEVM Intern - Ethereum Foundation (Remote)

• Smart Contract Engineer - Clearmatics (London/Remote)

Upcoming Dates of Note

• December 3, 2025: Fusaka mainnet fork - Ethereum's next major upgrade bringing PeerDAS and other improvements

• December 9, 2025: BPO1 fork - First Blob Parameter Only fork increasing blob target/max to 10/15

• Dec 11–13, 2025: Solana Breakpoint 2025 in Abu Dhabi, UAE – While Solana-focused, it includes multi-chain ecosystem discussions relevant to Ethereum builders.

• January 7, 2026: BPO2 fork - Second Blob Parameter Only fork increasing blob target/max to 14/21