Blog Title

New Week in Ethereum 2026-01-23

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

Week in Ethereum News

January 23, 2026

See this newsletter in your browser

Highlight of the Week

The Ethereum Foundation published Checkpoint #8: Jan 2026 (Jan 20), a high-level core-dev roundup covering Fusaka + BPO forks, Glamsterdam’s scoped headliners (ePBS + BALs), and the start of Hegotá headliner proposals (deadline noted as Feb 4)

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

All Core Devs – Testing (ACDT) #66 (call: Jan 19; notes posted Jan 19)
- Fusaka / BPO forks:
  - Reviewed mainnet BPO outcome and related follow-ups (per agenda + notes).
- Glamsterdam devnets (BALs + ePBS):
  - Discussed bal-devnet-0/1 updates, scope, and an epbs-devnet-0 update.
  - Devnet-2 readiness: target to launch “around Wednesday” pending merges / client readiness (per meeting summary).
  - Agreed to aim for a local devnet with simplified scope (e.g., no external builders / no p2p bid broadcast caveats called out in notes).
- Spec / testing process & action items:
  - “Next steps” included updating specs with caveats, pinging for images/releases, and beginning testing plans for ePBS.
All Core Devs – Consensus (ACDC) #173 (call: Jan 22; notes posted Jan 22)
- Glamsterdam: ePBS devnet-0 planning:
  - Reviewed ePBS implementation progress across clients and set a target for “devnet zero” by end of February; discussed a contingency of proceeding with an EL-only fork if ePBS isn’t ready.
- Glamsterdam: BALs plumbing:
  - Discussed an Engine API item related to block-level access lists (BALs) and asked clients to review/implement related work.
- Consensus-client engineering / risk:
  - Reviewed recent Teku performance issues and mitigations (including DB-related next steps).
- Consensus data structures / “partial cell proofs” workstream:
  - Compared client implementation status and agreed to roll out via devnet → testnet → client stable releases; flagged follow-ups (prototype/de-risk notes included).
- Hegotá:
  - Reminder: headliner proposals due Feb 4 (noted in agenda/summary).

Layer 1

Unified “SlowBlock” metrics across clients proposed a cross-client execution metrics spec (with a linked draft spec) to make performance comparisons and protocol decisions more data-driven (e.g., repricing analysis, network health monitoring).

Research

Staking decentralization & ops resilience:
- Native DVT for Ethereum staking proposed protocol-enshrined DVT: allowing a single validator (with enough balance) to register multiple keys with an m-of-n threshold, aiming to reduce operational complexity vs. off-protocol DVT while improving security/decentralization properties.
Execution-layer scalability & worst-case behavior:
- Worst-Case Block Size and Calldata Repricing for Glamsterdam analyzed a new worst-case block-size construction and discussed repricing directions (incl. access-list and calldata-floor repricing ideas) in the context of higher gas limits / blob counts and future PBS timelines.
Applications / UX bridging physical ↔ onchain:
- Crypto Native Cash: Bridging physical Cash and DeFi proposed using ERC-4337-style account abstraction + NFC-bound “physical possession” keys and a multi-key governance model to approximate cash-like transfer UX while retaining onchain controls (e.g., freezing/recovery).

Layer 2

Arbitrum’s Open House 2026 announced a global builder program with $800K in prizes, starting with an NYC edition and an online phase beginning Jan 29.
ArbOS “Dia” upgrade went live on Arbitrum, with the Foundation highlighting smoother fee behavior during spikes, foundations for higher throughput, passkey onboarding, new interop tokens, and “Ethereum Fusaka support.”

Stuff for Developers

Foundry v1.6.0 (rc1) (release candidate) shipped with Osaka as the default EVM hardfork, parallelized stateless fuzzing + configurable invariant check intervals (claiming up to 3.6× faster deep runs)
- Experimental: a Rust rewrite of foundryup was introduced to improve install/upgrade UX over time.
Hardhat v3.1.5 included small but practical DX improvements: better Solidity test display, a bumped viem across packages, and new/updated Solidity build hooks

Security

Makina Finance exploit: a flash-loan-driven price manipulation attack drained ~1,299 ETH (~$4M), with Decrypt reporting MEV dynamics where a builder frontran portions of the flow; reported root cause was classic oracle/spot-price manipulation around a liquidity pool.

Ecosystem

Vitalik Buterin on “new designs” for DAOs: Cointelegraph reports Vitalik arguing DAOs should move beyond simple token-voting treasuries toward designs that can support harder problems like onchain dispute resolution/courts and oracles.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 23.65%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~37.6% & Erigon ~26%
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-7892: Execution Layer Triggerable Withdrawals
  - Status: Moved to Final — Specifies execution-layer–initiated withdrawals, completing the standard for validator withdrawal control.
- EIP-7910: Beacon Block Root in the EVM
  - Status: Moved to Final — Exposes the beacon block root to the EVM, enabling native cross-layer verification.
- EIP-7934: Block-Level Access Lists (BALs)
  - Status: Moved to Final — Finalizes block-level access lists, a key building block for ePBS and future block construction.
- EIP-7823: Execution Payload Bodies V2
  - Status: Moved to Final — Defines a revised execution payload body format to support future PBS designs.
ERCs (Application Layer)
- ERC-7935: Human-Readable Chain Names
  - Status: Moved to Final — Standardizes human-readable chain identifiers for better UX and interoperability.

Onchain Stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 0.0 to 3.9 gwei, 0.1 gwei average; zero net issuance at 12.3 gwei
- 121.4k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $2,898– $3,361, currently $2,952, all-time high $4,946
ETHBTC: currently 0.033 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Regulation/Business/Tokens

Gemini Trust Company, LLC: the SEC filed a joint stipulation to dismiss (with prejudice) its civil enforcement action against Gemini; the release cites the “100 percent in-kind return” of Earn investors’ crypto assets and related settlements.
Purpose Ether ETF (ETHH) staking implementation: Purpose says it will begin staking the ETF’s ether “on or about January 30, 2026” and will charge a staking service fee (previously approved by unitholders).

Upcoming Dates of Note

February 17-21, 2026: ETHDenver BUIDLWeek - The world's largest Web3 developer conference and hackathon in Denver, Colorado.
Mar 30 – Apr 2, 2026: EthCC 9 (Ethereum Community Conference): Europe’s largest Ethereum-focused conference, with strong research and developer tracks.
April 29–30, 2026: TOKEN2049 Dubai: major global crypto and Web3 industry conference.

New Week in Ethereum 2026-01-16

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

Week in Ethereum News

January 16, 2026

See this newsletter in your browser

Highlight of the Week

ACDE #228 set near-term Execution Layer direction for “Glamsterdam” devnet planning, including preferring a simpler contract-size bump approach (EIP-7954) over more complex code-size metering proposals.

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #228, January 15, 2026
- Glamsterdam upgrade:
  - Devnet-2 scope: discussed and flagged for revisit (incl. coordination concerns with CL-side changes) and to be finalized at the next testing-focused discussion.
  - Concerns raised about the large number of EIPs potentially being included in Glamsterdam
  - If targeting a June 2026 mainnet release, testnet releases would be needed by mid-April
- EIP clarifications:
  - EIP-7778 (Block Gas Accounting without Refunds): Clarifications needed on CumulativeGasUsed in receipts and definitions of gasUsedForPaying and gasUsedForBlockLimit
  - EIP-8024 (Backward compatible SWAPN, DUPN, EXCHANGE): Discussion on behavior when code ends before immediate operand and proposal for a simpler version
  - EIP-7708 (ETH transfers emit a log): Pending PR with open questions about log address, topic values, and whether to include fee payment logs

Research

Blob Analysis after Fusaka and BPO Updates: empirical post-Fusaka / BPO study (MigaLabs) looking at blob utilization vs. targets and missed-slot correlations at higher blob counts, with a recommendation to pause further blob-parameter-only increases until miss rates normalize.
Recursive-STARK-based bandwidth-efficient mempool: proposes periodically emitting a single recursive STARK attesting to validity of all still-valid objects a node has seen (rather than attaching large proofs per object).
Trust minimized transaction simulation using state proofs: outlines a production-oriented approach for wallets to verify simulation prestate cryptographically (MPT proofs + multi-RPC stateRoot consensus) and then execute locally (e.g., with revm) to reduce blind trust in simulation APIs/RPCs.

Layer 2

Arbitrum positions itself as a stablecoin settlement layer, publishing a data-backed analysis highlighting concentration of stablecoin liquidity and transfer volume on Arbitrum and arguing this use case should guide future technical and ecosystem priorities.
Optimism governance updates proposal to align OP token with Superchain success, revising details on Jan 15 to incorporate feedback, including mechanics for allocating 50% of Superchain revenue toward OP token buybacks and ecosystem alignment.

Security

Yo Protocol suffered a $3.71 million loss on January 14, 2026, when a vault operator fat-fingered a $3.84 million swap with broken slippage parameters. Only $112K came out the other side. The team quietly backstopped the loss and waited two days to mention it publicly.
Truebit was drained for $26.2 million on January 12, 2026, through an unchecked integer overflow in unverified bytecode. This marks the first major hack of 2026, with the same attacker having hit Sparkle weeks prior.

Ecosystem

Gitcoin Grants 24 (GG24) is live under Gitcoin 3.0’s structured framework — The Gitcoin network-first public goods funding round continues active coordination of grants across domains to fund builders and ecosystem initiatives.
Ethereum NFT drop calendars show active mint schedules — Multiple NFT calendars are listing ongoing and upcoming Ethereum NFT drops, indicating sustained collector and creator activity in the ecosystem.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 23.89%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~37.6% & Erigon ~26%
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-7778: Block Gas Accounting without Refunds — Clarifies block gas accounting for receipts.
- EIP-7799: Fee Payment Log — Adds a standardized fee payment log.
- EIP-8024: Backward Compatible SWAPN, DUPN, and EXCHANGE — Specifies EVM behavior at the end of code execution.
- EIP-7825: Transaction Gas Limit Cap — Defines an RPC method for capping transaction gas limits.
ERCs (Application Layer):
- EIP-7932: Pad sigrecover Return Value to 32 Bytes — Pads sigrecover output to 32 bytes.
- EIP-8096: Double Repricing for Point Evaluation — Changes repricing to double.
- EIP-7916: Merkleize to the Right — Updates SSZ merkleization to right-padding.

Onchain Stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 0.0 to 1.9 gwei, 0.1 gwei average; zero net issuance at 12.3 gwei
- 121.3k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $3,076 – $3,379, currently $3,291, all time high $4,946
ETHBTC: currently 0.034 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Enterprise

EEA hosted Fusaka executive briefing — The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance held a private executive session with Ethereum Foundation and Protocol Guild speakers focused on Fusaka and its enterprise implications.
Baseline Protocol Reference Implementation 3 (BRI-3) — The Baseline Protocol advanced BRI-3 toward a usable reference implementation for enterprise, privacy-preserving workflows on public Ethereum.

Regulation/Business/Tokens

Bank of Italy economist warns that Ethereum's role in financial systems makes its token economics a concern for regulators, who may need to consider safeguards for its use in regulated finance.
BitMine Chair Tom Lee told investors the company could generate over $400 million income on its $13 billion worth of ether holdings, primarily via staking.

Job Postings

Ethereum Foundation: Enterprise Relationship Lead (Remote - APAC, US-East Coast)
Aztec: Marketing Assistant (New York City)
OP Labs: Senior Product Manager, Fintechs & Exchanges (New York, San Francisco)
Consensys: Senior Creative Copywriter (Remote - Canada, US)

Upcoming Dates of Note

January 23, 2026: Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #227 - Regular coordination call for Ethereum protocol developers.
February 17-21, 2026: ETHDenver BUIDLWeek - The world's largest Web3 developer conference and hackathon in Denver, Colorado.
Mar 30 – Apr 2, 2026: EthCC 9 (Ethereum Community Conference): Europe’s largest Ethereum-focused conference, with strong research and developer tracks.
April 29–30, 2026: TOKEN2049 Dubai: major global crypto and Web3 industry conference.

New Week in Ethereum 2026-01-09

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

Week in Ethereum News

January 09, 2026

See this newsletter in your browser

Highlight of the Week

Truebit’s TRU token suffered a major Ethereum smart-contract incident on Jan 8, 2026, with on-chain trackers and monitoring alerts pointing to ~8,535 ETH (~$26M) drained and a near-total TRU price collapse.

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

All Core Devs - Consensus (ACDC) #172, January 8, 2026
- Glamsterdam upgrade:
  - EL teams leaning toward considering EIP-8070 (Sparse blobpool) for inclusion
  - Discussion on EIP-7688 update to tree shape, with preference to shape the tree to the right
  - Proposal for local censoring signal in engine API to allow CLs to ban builders that censor transactions
- Hegotá upgrade:
  - Opened headliner proposal process, with submissions accepted until February 4, 2026
  - Brief discussion on fork focus/theme for the upgrade
- Announcements:
  - New breakout call on Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR) starting January 20, 2026
All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #227, January 5, 2026
- Glamsterdam upgrade:
  - Continued discussion on scoping decisions for the upgrade
  - Review of updated CFI/DFI candidate EIPs
  - Discussion of EIP-8051 and related EIPs for post-quantum signature verification
- ACD process updates presented by Pooja Ranjan
- Introduction of EIP-8077 and EIP-8094 for mempool improvements

Research

Block & Blob Propagation with PeerDAS: empirical analysis (via ethPandaOps’ Xatu data) of how higher blob counts correlate with worse block/blob validation latency and attestation rates, with results broken out across baseline mainnet vs PeerDAS/BPO observations and a proposed “seeding network” / supernode-style mitigation.
Solving Ethereum’s Fragmentation Problem With Sync Composability: argues that today’s multi-rollup environment breaks synchronicity + atomicity + composability, surveys current interop models, and frames “single-execution-environment” style designs as a path toward unified UX/DevX.
Non-Reactive Finance (NoRFi): proposes “non-reactive” DeFi primitives where outcomes are driven by explicit commitments + time rather than oracle-triggered liquidation races, aiming to reduce adversarial timing dependence and make risk more mechanically legible.

Layer 2

Polygon Labs unveiled Open Money Stack, a new modular framework designed to support stablecoin-based payments and streamline cross-border value transfers.
Optimism Foundation proposed using 50% of Superchain revenue to buy back OP tokens, tying the token more directly to ecosystem growth.
Starknet experienced a four-hour outage on January 5, with the team warning that transactions submitted between 09:24 and 09:42 UTC may not have been processed correctly.

Stuff for Developers

Ethereum's staking queues have cleared, allowing the network to absorb new validators and exits almost in real time. This development means staking is settling into a steady state with rewards compressing toward 3%, as total staked ETH has grown faster than issuance and fee income.
Vitalik Buterin shared his vision for Ethereum in 2026, emphasizing two key goals: usability and decentralization. In his New Year's post, he highlighted technical progress made in 2025 but cautioned against chasing the "next meta" rather than focusing on Ethereum's original mission of becoming a "world computer."

Security

Hardware wallet giant Ledger is facing a data exposure incident linked to its third-party payment processor, Global-e. The breach involved unauthorized access to Ledger users' personal details including names and contact information from Global-e's cloud system.

Ecosystem

Morgan Stanley has deepened its crypto involvement by filing a registration statement for an Ethereum trust with the SEC. This move follows the bank's recent filings for spot Bitcoin and Solana ETFs.
MSCI announced it would not move forward with plans to exclude digital asset treasury firms from its indexes, at least for now.
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee is approaching agreement on a bipartisan crypto market structure bill, with a vote scheduled for January 15.

Notable at app layer

The entire team of Electric Coin Company (ECC), a key developer of Zcash, has resigned due to a governance dispute with the nonprofit Bootstrap. The news caused Zcash to fall 14% in value.
Iran's Ministry of Defense export center, Mindex, is now accepting cryptocurrency payments for advanced weapons systems as a means of bypassing international sanctions. Prospective customers can buy weapons such as missiles, tanks, and drones using crypto, Iranian rials, or bartering.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 24.17%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~36.31%
- 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-7773 (Glamsterdam Upgrade): Status updates from ACDE227.
- EIP-7979 (Call and Return Opcodes for the EVM): Updated 'timestamp' to 'gas' example.
- EIP-8051 (recompile for ML-DSA signature verification): Fixed undefined variable reference.
ERCs (Application Layer):
- EIP-7932 (Secondary Signature Algorithms): Polish grammar and spelling improvements.
- EIP-6404 (SSZ transactions): Updated to new EIP-7932 registry.

Onchain Stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 0.0 to 3.0 gwei, 0.1 gwei average; zero net issuance at 12.2 gwei
- 121.36k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $3,068.56 – $3,292.52, currently $3,087.86, all-time high $4,946
ETHBTC: currently 0.038 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Regulation/Business/Tokens

Morgan Stanley filed for an Ethereum staking ETF, adding to its growing crypto lineup. The investment bank is seeking to capture additional yield from the proposed ETF's Ether holdings via staking.
Grayscale declared its first Ethereum staking payout for its US-listed ETF. The cash distribution stems from staking rewards earned after the fund enabled Ethereum staking in October.
SharpLink generated $33M from Ether staking and deployed another $170M ETH. Corporate crypto treasuries are increasingly turning to Ether staking to generate recurring yield from onchain operations.

Miscellaneous

Ethereum blob limit has been raised to 21, boosting network scalability. This second increase in recent weeks will allow more transactions to be batched via rollups, making them cheaper.
Ethereum staking saw a tidal shift as the validator exit queue fell near zero for the first time since July, with staking demand increasing, led by BitMine's aggressive accumulation.
Ethereum and Solana developers clashed over what blockchain resilience really means, with Vitalik and Solana's Yakovenko outlining competing ideas about resilience, exposing deeper trade-offs between sovereignty, speed, and economic design.

Job Postings

Optimism is hiring for multiple roles including Senior Software Engineer, Protocol Engineer, and Security Engineer to work on their Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution.
Consensys is looking for a Senior Product Manager for MetaMask and a Blockchain Protocol Engineer to work on Ethereum infrastructure.
Ethereum Foundation has openings for Protocol Researchers and Developers to contribute to core Ethereum protocol development.
Lido is seeking a Smart Contract Engineer and Protocol Security Specialist to enhance their liquid staking protocol on Ethereum.

Upcoming Dates of Note

January 23, 2026: Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #227 - Regular coordination call for Ethereum protocol developers.
February 17-21, 2026: ETHDenver BUIDLWeek - The world's largest Web3 developer conference and hackathon in Denver, Colorado.
Mar 30 – Apr 2, 2026: EthCC 9 (Ethereum Community Conference): Europe’s largest Ethereum-focused conference, with strong research and developer tracks.
April 29–30, 2026: TOKEN2049 Dubai: major global crypto and Web3 industry conference.

New Week in Ethereum 2026-01-02

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

Week in Ethereum News

January 02, 2026

See this newsletter in your browser

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

New Week in Ethereum 2025-12-26

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

Week in Ethereum News

December 26, 2025

See this newsletter in your browser

Highlight of the Week

The Ethereum core developers have chosen "Hegotá" as the official portmanteau for the upcoming network upgrade after Glamsterdam, combining "Heze" (the H-star name) and "Bogotá" (the Devcon city name).

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

Research

“Demystifying Blockchain KV Lookups: From O(log N) to O(1) Disk I/O”: reports controlled Pebble experiments (22GB → 2.2TB) arguing that once Bloom filters + top index blocks are cached, random lookup I/O collapses toward ~1–2 disk reads (and can further approach ~1–1.3 when index blocks fit), materially changing how we should model EL database bottlenecks.
“Wormholes and the cost of plausible deniability”: argues wormholes’ “plausible deniability” property appears in tension with Ethereum’s 160-bit address space, and that EIP-7503’s implied anonymity set is lower than expected in practice; ends with a sketched alternative direction using beacon-chain deposits.
“Does FHE deserve this much attention?”: surveys why FHE is resurging (general computation over encrypted state), but highlights that many “FHEVM-style” designs still rely on MPC committees for key management/decryption; points to newer directions aiming to reduce committee trust (e.g., the linked “Root iO” paper).

Security

Gnosis Chain hard fork to recover ~$9.4M frozen after the Balancer exploit: Multiple reports state the hard fork activated Dec 22, 2025, with the announcement following shortly after; it’s framed as a governance-approved recovery of funds that were frozen post-exploit.

Ecosystem

Ethereum NFT trading volume rebounds week-over-week: Ethereum-based NFT collections saw a notable rebound in activity this week, with reported trading volume rising roughly week-over-week and Ethereum retaining the largest share of total NFT sales across chains
Ethereum address growth reaches new local highs": On-chain metrics published this week show Ethereum averaging close to 200,000 new addresses per day, signaling continued ecosystem participation despite broader market volatility.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 24.31%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~51.24% & Prysm ~25.06%
- 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-8081: Update portmanteau for Hegotá.
- EIP-7998: Avoid pre-fork randao seed computation.
- EIP-8032: Use S_pre in SSTORE gas formula.
ERCs (Application Layer):
- EIP-7932: Fix undefined SIZE in EIP-7932.
- EIP-7928: Clarify wording around 7702.
- EIP-7942: Correct Python syntax errors in pseudocode.

Onchain Stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 0.0 to 1.1 gwei, 0.0 gwei average; zero net issuance at 12.2 gwei
- 18.64 ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $2,901– $3,060, currently $2,930, all-time high $4,946
ETHBTC: currently 0.033 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Regulation/Business/Tokens

ETHZilla sells $74.5 million of ether to trim debt load, their second sale following a $40 million sale in October for share repurchases.
BitMine buys $300 million in ether, crossing the 4 million ETH treasury milestone as crypto markets slid.
Boxing Day options expiration will see $27 billion in bitcoin and ether options reset, with a bullish bias indicated by a put-call ratio of 0.38.

Miscellaneous

Ethereum's 'Glamsterdam' upgrade aims to fix MEV fairness with enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) and Block-level Access Lists, targeted for 2026.
Aave community split over tokenholder rights debate, described as the "most important tokenholder rights debate" in the protocol's history.
Uniswap's token burn and protocol fee proposal backed overwhelmingly by voters, transforming UNI into a value-accruing asset with more than 125 million votes in support.

Upcoming Dates of Note

Dec 31, 2025: Year-end options expiration for $27 billion in bitcoin and ether contracts
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

New Week in Ethereum 2025-12-19

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

Week in Ethereum News

December 19, 2025

See this newsletter in your browser

Highlight of the Week

Core developers have decided to change the H-star name for the upgrade after Glamsterdam from "Heka" to "Heze" (an actual IAU star).

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #226 on December 18, 2025:
- Glamsterdam upgrade scoping: Discussions on CFI/DFI candidate EIPs for inclusion in the Glamsterdam upgrade
- Contract code size: Lido expressed support for EIP-7907 (increasing contract code size to 48KB) as a pragmatic solution over the more complex EIP-2926
- Post-Quantum cryptography: Discussion on inclusion of DILITHIUM44 and FALCON512 PQ signatures in Glamsterdam
- H-star naming: Decision to change from Heka to Heze for the upgrade after Glamsterdam
- Holiday schedule: Proposed ACD holiday schedule with several calls canceled between December 22 and January 1

Layer 1

Nonce Gap Simulation Report for EIP-8077, providing data on how nonce gaps affect transaction propagation
Observation on Ethereum's blockspace market examining MEV, proposer-builder separation, and censorship resistance

Research

Post-Quantum Cryptography:
- Gas/Security-Bit for PQ Signatures on EVM: A new dataset and methodology for evaluating the gas cost vs. security tradeoffs for post-quantum signatures on Ethereum
- The road to Post-Quantum Ethereum continues to be actively discussed, with recent updates focusing on Account Abstraction as a pathway
MEV and Transaction Processing:
- Universal Enshrined Encrypted Mempool EIP: A proposal for a protocol-level encrypted mempool to address MEV issues
- On In-Protocol Gas Futures: Research on implementing gas futures directly in the Ethereum protocol
Economics and Public Goods:
- Staircase Unrestricted Uncle Maker Attack: Analysis of a potential economic attack vector on consensus incentives

Layer 2

Ethereum Foundation outlines zkEVM security milestones - The EF cryptography team published a roadmap for zkEVM security, shifting focus from performance to security. Three key milestones were announced: soundcalc integration by February 2026, 100-bit provable security by May 2026 (Glamsterdam), and 128-bit provable security by the end of 2026 (H-star).

Security

Yearn Finance exploited for $293k - Yearn suffered its second hack in six weeks and fourth exploit overall. The attack recycled a 2023 vulnerability to drain funds from the protocol.
Aevo (formerly Ribbon Finance) lost $2.7 million - A proxy admin vulnerability in old vaults allowed an attacker to hijack the oracle, manipulate prices, and drain the contract in a single atomic transaction.

Ecosystem

The Future of Ethereum's State - The Stateless Consensus team published a proposal addressing Ethereum's state growth challenges. The article outlines three approaches: state expiry, state archive, and making it easier to hold and serve state, with a focus on reducing state as a performance bottleneck.
2025 upgrade process retrospective - The Ethereum community is discussing lessons learned from this year's protocol upgrades, with multiple contributors sharing insights over the past week.
ENS Trust Registry for Agent Coordination proposed - A new ERC proposal aims to create a trust registry using ENS for coordinating AI agents and services on Ethereum.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 24.25%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse 53.66%
- 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:

Prysm v7.1.1: Fixed potential deadlock scenario in data column batch verification and improved processing and metrics for cells and proofs.

Execution layer:

Nethermind v1.35.8: Optimized getProofs RPC endpoints for better performance and efficiency, and added build-time signing of release artifacts to improve release security and authenticity.

EIPs/Standards

EIPs (Core, Networking, Interface):

EIP-7917 (Deterministic proposer lookahead): Moved to Final status. Implements stable proposer lookahead.
EIP-8081 (Hardfork Meta - Heka/Bogotá): Portmanteau selected (Hegota).

ERCs (Application Layer):

EIP-7928 (Block-Level Access Lists): Updated missing components in size analysis and updated sizes with 60m block gas.
EIP-7932 (Secondary Signature Algorithms): Migrated to new registry.
EIP-7745 (Trustless log and transaction index): Added proof format and wire protocol specs.

Onchain Stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 0.0 to 2.3 gwei, 0.1 gwei average; zero net issuance at 12.1 gwei
- 18.56k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $2,781 – $3,158, currently $2,979, all-time high $4,946
ETHBTC: currently 0.033 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Regulation/Business/Tokens

United Kingdom crypto regulatory regime timeline — The UK Treasury and Finance Ministry announced the country will bring cryptoassets under formal regulation starting in October 2027, including oversight by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to enhance consumer protection and market integrity.
Erebor Bank regulatory milestone — Erebor Bank, a crypto-oriented finance startup founded by Palmer Luckey, received conditional approval from the FDIC, bringing it closer to launch pending final Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) approval. This signals regulatory progress for crypto-bank-linked institutions in the U.S. financial system.
JPMorgan tokenized fund on Ethereum — JPMorgan Chase launched a tokenized money-market fund called the My OnChain Net Yield Fund built on the Ethereum blockchain, marking a significant institutional push into tokenized traditional financial products despite historical skepticism from its leadership.

Upcoming Dates of Note

Dec 19-20, 2025: ETHDenver Hackathon Registration deadline for the February 2026 event.
January 7, 2026: BPO2 fork - Second Blob Parameter Only fork increasing blob target/max to 14/21
February 1-28, 2026: ETH Riyadh in Riyadh, KSA - the Middle East's premier Web3 summit.
June 8-10, 2026: ETHConf in New York, USA - gathering 5,000+ founders, speakers, industry leaders, and builders.

New Week in Ethereum 2025-12-13

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

title: "New Week in Ethereum 2025-12-13" permalink: "/blog/20251213/"

Week in Ethereum News

December 13, 2025

See this newsletter in your browser

Highlight of the Week

BPO1 (Blob-Parameter-Only fork) activated on Ethereum mainnet at epoch 412,672 (Dec 9, 2025 14:21 UTC), raising blob target/max to 10/15 (see the epoch boundary block on Etherscan)

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

All Core Devs - Consensus (ACDC) #171, Dec 11, 2025
- Client Diversity: Concerns raised about declining client diversity with Lighthouse at 42.71%, Prysm at 30.91%, Teku at 13.86%, and Nimbus at 8.74%. Discussion about potential campaign to encourage large stakers to improve diversity.
- Fusaka Retrospective: Discussed the 2025 upgrade process retrospective to improve future upgrades.
- Glamsterdam Upgrade:
  - Trustless Payments in EIP-7732: Lighthouse team presented their opinion on trustless payments, with majority supporting continued inclusion but noting a significant minority opinion preferring delay to the next fork.
  - Non-headliner EIP Scoping: Discussed several EIPs including FOCIL, EIP-7688, EIP-8061, and EIP-8080.
- Heka/Bogotá Upgrade: Discussed the scoping process and potential portmanteau names, with "Hekotá" emerging as a leading candidate.
All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #63, December 8, 2025
- Focus on testing infrastructure and methodologies for upcoming network upgrades.
- Reviewed Fusaka upgrade performance and discussed testing strategies for Glamsterdam features.

Layer 1

Institutional Staking Concerns Raised - A representative from Fidelity's digital asset management division highlighted concerns about staking liquidity, noting that combined entry and exit queue delays reaching approximately 70 days is incompatible with traditional financial products.

Research

Achieving 10GigaGas/s EVM Execution - A new research proposal outlines how Block-level Access Lists (BAL) combined with parallel execution could potentially achieve 10GigaGas/s EVM execution, dramatically scaling Ethereum's throughput.
Trustless Payments Research - New research explores trustless payment mechanisms that could enhance security and reduce MEV extraction, with potential applications in the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade.

Layer 2

ZKsync Lite to shut down in 2026 as Matter Labs announced plans to sunset the older version of their Layer 2 solution in early 2026. The company framed the move as a planned transition to focus fully on ZKsync Era.
Optimism released op-deployer v0.5.2, adding support for v5.0.0 contracts and fixing error handling in game type CLI parsing. This update enables validators to work with the latest contract versions.
OKX migrates XLayer to the OP Stack, joining the growing list of major exchanges choosing Optimism's technology for their Layer 2 solutions. The migration highlights the OP Stack's security and scalability advantages..

Stuff for Developers

Hardhat v3.1.0
- Sets Osaka as the default hardfork for local networks, adds Solidity 0.8.31 support, and introduces unified test output for Solidity tests + the Node.js test runner.
- @nomicfoundation/hardhat-node-test-runner@3.0.8 integrates the node test runner with unified test output; includes merged test summaries when running multiple test tasks.
Foundry nightlies (multiple pre-releases shipped during the week)
- Nightly (2025-12-06): includes an Anvil fix for incorrect historical state dumps, plus assorted CLI/verification refactors.
Remix Project v1.4.0 (released Dec 10)
- Updates ethereumjs dependencies (noted as “for fusaka upgrade”), plus multiple IDE/editor improvements and verification-related fixes.
- Adds dynamic type loading for TS/JS autocompletion, and improvements around LearnEth/tutorial handling

Ecosystem

Stripe's Tempo blockchain testnet goes live, adding Kalshi, Mastercard, and UBS as partners. The payment-focused blockchain is being built by Stripe and Paradigm to address financial infrastructure needs.
Optimism selects Ether.fi to deploy liquid staking treasury on OP Mainnet, expanding staking options within the Optimism ecosystem.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 24.72%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~50.87% & Prysm ~19.42%
- 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-7928 (Block Access List Size Analysis): Add updated BAL size analysis for 60M gas
- EIP-8024 (Backward compatible SWAPN, DUPN, EXCHANGE): Add explicit halting conditions
- EIP-7966 (eth_sendRawTransactionSync Method): Align receipt waiting semantics with reference implementation
ERCs (Application Layer):
- EIP-5593 (Restrict Ethereum Provider API Injection): Resolve MUST/SHOULD contradiction for third-party iframe blocking
- EIP-8072 (Transaction Inclusion Subscription): Fix specification inconsistencies

Onchain Stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 0.0 to 1.1 gwei, 0.2 gwei average; zero net issuance at 11.9 gwei
ETHUSD: $2,946 – $3,390, currently $4,349, all-time high $4,946
ETHBTC: currently 0.034 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Enterprise

Superstate rolls out direct stock issuance for public companies on Ethereum and Solana, allowing SEC-registered firms to sell shares directly on blockchain rails and raise funds in stablecoins.

Regulation/Business/Tokens

Five crypto firms win initial approvals as trust banks, including Ripple, Circle, and BitGo, marking a significant step toward regulated crypto banking services.
U.S. SEC gives implicit nod for tokenized stocks, opening the door for broader adoption of security tokens representing traditional equities.
Ether surges 8%, outpacing Bitcoin gains amid staking ETF and tokenization optimism, with BlackRock's filing for a staking ether ETF contributing to ETH's relative strength.

Miscellaneous

Fusaka cementing Ethereum's role as on-chain finance settlement layer, according to Bitwise. The upgrade will boost throughput, keep validators efficient, and strengthen Ethereum's value capture by putting a floor under blob fees.
ZKsync Lite to shut down in 2026 as Matter Labs moves on, framing the move as a planned sunset as the company focuses on newer solutions.

Upcoming Dates of Note

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
February 1-28, 2026: ETH Riyadh in Riyadh, KSA - the Middle East's premier Web3 summit.
June 8-10, 2026: ETHConf in New York, USA - gathering 5,000+ founders, speakers, industry leaders, and builders.

New Week in Ethereum 2025-12-06

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

Week in Ethereum News

December 06, 2025

See this newsletter in your browser

Highlight of the Week

The Fusaka upgrade successfully activated on Ethereum mainnet on December 3, 2025, bringing PeerDAS for enhanced data availability and several other improvements. However, the upgrade was followed by some issues, most notably a participation drop affecting Prysm nodes.

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #225, December 4, 2025
- Fusaka post-upgrade: Discussion of incidents following the fork, including the Prysm participation drop and other minor issues.
- Glamsterdam upgrade: Continued discussion of CFI/DFI candidate EIPs for the next upgrade.
- Housekeeping: Confirmed cancellation of ACDC call on December 25, and discussed whether to keep the ACDE call on January 1.
- FOCIL status: Temperature check on whether FOCIL should be included in Heka/Bogotá as CFI or SFI.

Fusaka Upgrade

The Fusaka upgrade successfully activated on Ethereum mainnet on December 3, 2025, at epoch 411392 (slot 13164544).
Post-upgrade issues were reported, most significantly:
- Prysm participation drop: Prysm nodes were halted due to stale attestations triggering generation of older states. The solution was to restart nodes with a config flag, and the network began recovering quickly after the issue was identified.
- Missing data in Dasmon: Probing showed many reports of missing data, possibly caused by late blob deliveries.
- Nethermind bug with Nimbus: Nethermind reported a wrong invalid block at slot 13164552 when running with Nimbus CL.
- Late delivery reorgs: Some blocks arrived late but still became canonical due to fork choice evaluation.
- Reth bugs: Several issues were reported that may be related to the Fusaka upgrade.

Layer 1

Client diversity concerns were raised during the ACDE call, with data showing Lighthouse at 42.71% and Prysm at 30.91% of consensus clients, while Geth represents 41% of execution clients.
EIP-7708: ETH transfers emit a log received advocacy for inclusion in the next Ethereum upgrade to simplify the ability to query ETH value updates from transactions with just a vanilla Ethereum node.
State creation repricing approaches were summarized by Anders Elowsson, outlining three paradigms: Repricing, Metering, and Targeting.

Research

Threshold Encrypted Mempools with mev-commit Preconfirmations introduces a combined Shutter + mev-commit design for frontrunning-resistant encrypted mempools. Builders commit blindly and are slashable if they fail to include transactions once decrypted. A live testnet demonstrates the design, with future work aimed at eliminating plaintext exposure at RPCs.
AltDA Integration Framework formalizes how rollups should verify external DA networks safely. It identifies commitment-binding, deterministic decoding, and DAV correctness as critical safety pillars. The post highlights timing attacks and proposes explicit recency checks to prevent data-withholding halts.
Continuous Verifiable Reality (CVR) outlines a system for continuously validated off-chain collateral using staked oracle networks. It introduces a “verification discount” that could significantly reduce Basel-style risk weights. The post models real capital-efficiency gains for stable RWA-backed credit.
ZK Secret Santa protocol uses ZKPs and nullifiers to privately match participants without revealing pairings. Its Sparse Merkle Tree registry ensures uniqueness and prevents double participation. Researchers frame it as a testbed for private governance, matching, and airdrops.

Layer 2

Native USDC and CCTP go live on Starknet. Starknet announced that Circle’s native USDC and Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol are now live, giving the L2 direct issuance of regulated USDC plus canonical bridging to 18+ chains without wrapped tokens.
Fusaka makes L2 data cheaper and denser. The Fusaka upgrade activated on December 3, introducing PeerDAS (EIP-7594) so validators only sample a fraction of blob data while still guaranteeing availability, which BeInCrypto notes enables up to an 8x effective scalability boost for rollups by expanding blob bandwidth.

Security

Yearn Finance suffered its third exploit with $9 million drained from a forgotten yETH pool due to an unchecked arithmetic underflow in legacy code.

Ecosystem

Fusaka mainnet upgrade scheduled for December 3, 2025, introducing improvements to L1 performance, increased blob throughput, and enhanced user experience.
Devconnect Buenos Aires concluded as the largest Ethereum Foundation event yet, bringing together developers, founders, creators, and newcomers from around the world.
EF Q3 grantees announced, sharing $12.8 million in funding across various projects.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 24.41%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~57.61% & Teku ~14.26%
- 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-7688: Move to Review: Important update to EIP status.
- EIP-7773: Update Glamsterdam scope: Refinement of the Glamsterdam hardfork scope.
- EIP-7569: Backlink hard fork Meta EIPs: Improved documentation for hard fork Meta EIPs.
- Hardfork Meta - Heka/Bogotá: New hardfork meta EIP added.
ERCs (Application Layer):
- EIP-8077: Improved rationale: Enhanced rationale for this application layer proposal.
- EIP-8071: Fix typos and grammar: Documentation improvements.
- EIP-7932: Remove RLP TX wrapper and add pythonic registry definition: Significant update to the proposal structure.

Onchain Stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 0.1 to 2.7 gwei, 0.1 gwei average; zero net issuance at 12.0 gwei
ETHUSD: $2,736 – $3,222, currently $3,032, all time high $4,946
ETHBTC: currently 0.033 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Regulation/Business/Tokens

Bank of America to allow wealth-management clients exposure to crypto ETPs — Beginning January 5, 2026, Bank of America (including Merrill and Merrill Edge) will let advisors recommend crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) to clients, expanding institutional access to crypto investments.

Job Postings

BizOps Lead at Lido: Remote position focusing on operations and strategy for the leading liquid staking protocol.
Senior Community Support Manager at Consensys: Remote position in Canada/US with salary range $123K-$153K.
Head of Security at Ethena Labs: Remote position focusing on security strategy and implementation for this DeFi protocol.
Enterprise Sales Lead, Institutions at OP Labs: Position in New York or San Francisco focusing on institutional partnerships for Optimism.
HR Generalist at Offchain Labs: Remote position supporting the team behind Arbitrum.

Upcoming Dates of Note

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
February 1-28, 2026: ETH Riyadh in Riyadh, KSA - the Middle East's premier Web3 summit.
June 8-10, 2026: ETHConf in New York, USA - gathering 5,000+ founders, speakers, industry leaders, and builders.

New Week in Ethereum 2025-11-28

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

Week in Ethereum News

November 28, 2025

See this newsletter in your browser

Highlight of the Week

Vitalik Buterin proposed a new targeted gas-cost model that could lead to a roughly 5× increase in block gas limit for heavy operations — signalling the next wave of scaling ahead of the scheduled Fusaka hard fork on December 3.

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

All Core Devs – Consensus (ACDC) #170 (Nov 27, 2025)
- Fusaka: test status, mainnet plan & incident response
  - Client teams reported successful Fusaka shadow-fork tests, with 100% participation noted in at least one run, and no new blockers flagged at the consensus layer.
  - Agreed to tighten incident-response coordination, with action items for client teams to submit PRs clarifying who does what if issues arise during the Dec 3 upgrade.
- Glamsterdam: ePBS progress, devnets & trustless payments
  - Multiple consensus-client teams shared implementation progress on enshrined PBS (ePBS, EIP-7732) for Glamsterdam; several are aiming for late December or early January devnet testing of their ePBS work.
  - Ongoing community questions about trustless payments in ePBS, referencing earlier breakout discussions around EIP-7732 variants.
- FOCIL (EIP-7805) & fork scoping across Glamsterdam and Heka/Bogotá
  - Revisited EIP-7805 (FOCIL) and its role in upcoming forks, debating process labels like SFI (Soft For Inclusion) vs CFI (Candidate For Inclusion) and how they interact with “headliner” vs “non-headliner” features.
  - Agreed to:
    - Treat FOCIL as DFI (Definitely For Inclusion) for Glamsterdam, elevating it to a core part of that upgrade’s censorship-resistance roadmap.
    - Use CFI (rather than SFI) as the right process label for FOCIL in the post-Glamsterdam “H-star” / Heka-Bogotá fork, signalling strong interest but leaving room for more testing and spec work.

Layer 1

Proposed lightweight design for in-protocol distributed history & state storage using blobs, reducing per-node storage to ~80 GB/year and outlining a path to “verifiability on a smartwatch.”
EIP-7928 Breakout #7 (summary published this week) details progress on Block Access Lists, SnapSync requirements, and preparations for testing extremely high-gas (300M+) blocks to evaluate future scalability ceilings.

Research

MEV and Proposer-Builder Separation:
- Trustless payments: right vibe, more trust? - Analysis of trust assumptions in trustless payment systems.
State Management and Storage:
- Integrated in-protocol distributed history and state storage - Proposal for a protocol-level solution to history and state storage.
- State Locks as Proposer Commitments - Exploration of using state locks as a mechanism for proposer commitments.
Layer 2 and Cross-Chain Interoperability:
- EIL: Trust minimized cross-L2 interop - Proposal for trust-minimized interoperability between Layer 2 solutions.

Stuff for Developers

Foundry (nightly) / Anvil improvements: Refactor of the local chain node (anvil), simplifying fee-history reward calculations — which helps reduce overhead and improve reliability when simulating chain replay or tests.

Security

MegaETH pre-deposit incident - A $250 million pre-deposit imploded into 156 seconds of chaos after infrastructure failed, parameters broke, and MegaETH's team collected all required multisig signatures too early, resulting in deposits reaching $500 million. No hack occurred - just human error at scale.
GANA Payment exploited - $3.1 million was drained from GANA Payment via leaked owner keys and an EIP-7702 delegation exploit, just nine days after launch.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 24.12%, 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: hotfix addressing bugs and performance issues discovered in v8.0.0, including preventing unnecessary state advances pre-Fulu and fixing a rare custody context initialization race condition.

Execution layer:

Nethermind v1.35.3 — This mandatory update readies nodes for Fusaka (Osaka, BPO1, BPO2 upgrades) and includes multiple fixes to trie storage, block-range updates, session handling, and state-consistency issues that could cause instability.

EIPs/Standards

EIPs (Core, Networking, Interface):

EIP-7594: PeerDAS (Data Availability Sampling) - enables validators to verify rollup blob data without downloading everything, reducing bandwidth requirements.
EIP-7892: Blob Parameter Only Hardforks - allows for more flexible and frequent adjustments to blob capacity.
EIP-7825: Transaction Gas Limit Cap - caps the gas a single transaction can use.

ERCs (Application Layer):

EIP-7951: Precompile for secp256r1 Curve Support - adds native support for P-256 signatures used by Apple's Secure Enclave, Android Keystore, and FIDO2/WebAuthn passkeys.
EIP-7883: ModExp Gas Cost Increase - reprices the MODEXP precompile to prevent block stalling.

Onchain Stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 0.0 to 4.0 gwei, 0.1 gwei average; zero net issuance at 13.9 gwei
- 18.46 ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $2,707 – $3,072, currently $3,007, all-time high $4,946
ETHBTC: currently 0.033 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Regulation/Business/Tokens

Ethereum validators have pushed the block gas limit to 60 million, the highest level in four years. Over 513,000 validators signaled support for the increase, which expands network capacity ahead of the Fusaka upgrade.
Ethereum ICO whale cashed out $60 million after achieving a 9,500x gain, while data shows the top 1% of ETH holders continue to accumulate despite the recent market downturn.
ERC-20 stablecoin supply has preserved its $185 billion record high despite recent market volatility, which analysts interpret as a bullish signal for the crypto market.

Miscellaneous

ETH traders have ramped up leverage as futures dominance surged, with many setting a price target of $3,400 despite current price hovering around $3,083.
Vitalik Buterin commented on the gas limit increase, stating that he expects network growth to continue next year "in a more targeted and less uniform way," focusing on increasing capacity while making inefficient operations more expensive.

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

New Week in Ethereum 2025-11-21

2026-01-29T07:54:34Z

Week in Ethereum News

November 21, 2025

See this newsletter in your browser

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