Ethereal news weekly #2

BPO1 upgrade increased blobs, DTC securities tokenization pilot, William Mougayar: Ethereum valuation

BPO1 live (first blob parameter only upgrade): increased blobs per block to target: 10 & max: 15 (up from target: 6 & max: 9)
BPO2 on January 7, increases blobs per block to target: 14 & max: 21
William Mougayar: Ethereum’s valuation as a public good, $2-6T near term, $10-20T by 2035 if it becomes the global trust & settlement layer
Kevin Owocki: reforming public goods funding
ETH metrics:
- Gas (gwei): 0.2 average, 0.0 - 1.1 (11.9 for zero net issuance)
- ETHUSD: $2,947 - $3,391 (all time high $4,946, August 24, 2025)
- ETH ETFs: 5% of ETH supply
- ETHBTC: 0.035 (0.165 for the Flippening)

Consensys

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Synthetix wick insurance: perps traders can purchase dynamically priced protection for pre-defined time period where accounts are frozen rather than liquidated
Veil Cash 0xbow deposit screening for privacy protocol on Base
Daico.wtf: fundraise using tokens, templates for streaming & governance, live on mainnet & Base
Fileverse dDocs: adds version history
Nouns DAO named core contracts using Enscribe
Jonathan Mann: every 2M blocks, note NFTs extend song by a year
Farcaster switches focus to wallet-first after 4.5 years of social-first

Hardhat v3.1.0 (dev framework): Osaka default EVM for local networks, adds Solidity v0.8.31 support and unified test summary for Solidity & JavaScript tests
Remix v1.4.0 (dev framework): Osaka default EVM & improved autocompletion for TypeScript/JavaScript files
Blockscout (block explorer): contract analysis guide
Getcode.eth (tool): contract metadata for deployed bytecode via onchain resolver
SlotScan (tool): storage layout for verified contracts; EVM storage learnings
PeerDAS:
- Feelyourprotocol PeerDAS (widget): cross-check versioned hashes, commitments & proofs
- Pcaversaccio raw-tx (signing scripts): adds PeerDAS support to sign-eip4844
TrueBlocks mini-dApps (local-first utilities): video tutorials on how to create
Base Pay 1-step payments: uses ERC8050 compressed RPC links, stateless interactions & callbacks
x402:
- x402 v2: adds identity, discovery, dynamic routing, multi-chain/fiat support & plug-in SDK
- ERC8004 agents explorer: discover registered agents on Sepolia testnet
- x402 hackathon: submit projects by January 5
Application layer standards (ERCs):
- Proposal for simplified Diamond contracts standard
- ERC8100: Representable contract state
- ERC8102: Permissioned pull
- ERC8103: Permissioned authorization object

USPD ~$1M exploit via clandestine proxy in the middle of proxy (CPIMP), proxy initialization was front run in September
samczsun: higher bug bounties won’t stop hacks, annual security reviews needed focused on entire deployment
Who has security: list of projects with in-house security
Security Alliance (SEAL): financial transparency report
Reminder: revoke unnecessary token approvals

Fusaka upgrade:
- Upgrade process retrospective: add your feedback
Glamsterdam upgrade (targeting June 2026):
- ePBS: trustless payments not removed, explore non-validating staked builders
- Considered for Inclusion:
  - EIP7688 forward compatible consensus data structures
  - EIP8080 exits use consolidation queue & EIP8061 increase churn limits
Heka + Bogota upgrade:
- Fork focus discussion & headliner proposals starts in January
- Considered for Inclusion: EIP7805 FOCIL, potential headliner
- Heka not in IAU catalog of stars, proposal to choose new H-star name

EF P2P Networking team: blob inclusion analysis
Glamsterdam upgrade:
- Block-level Access Lists: Kurtosis testnet ran for 13 epochs with 4 clients

Fusaka upgrade:
- ethPandaOps: PeerDAS node metrics, 18% supernodes, 46% custody 4 columns (minimum), 23% custody 5-8 columns
Glamsterdam upgrade:
- EIP7732 ePBS breakout #28: dynamic penalties as solution to free option problem, non-staked builders & trustless payments discussion
Consensus spec viewer: view spec items & navigate to consumers
Discovery v5 (used to find new peers) migration tracker: sunset v4 by Glamsterdam
Karl Floersch: EVM scaling, interactive overview
Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs):
- EIP8101: Payload chunking with chunk access lists

Beaconcha.in v2 API: monitor performance with BeaconScore, real-time consensus layer data, analyze rewards & queues; free tier: 1k requests per month
Client diversity:
- Consensus layer: ⚠️ Lighthouse ~57% (data may not be 100% accurate)
- Execution layer: Geth ~41%, Nethermind ~38% (estimated from self reports)
Staking marketshare: Lido 24.7% [Note: dual governance]
Client releases:
- Consensus layer:
  - Prysm v7.1.0: critical fixes for attestation processing, workaround flag can be removed, checkpoint sync backfills data columns & semi-supernode mode custodies 50%+ columns to rebuild blobs
- Execution layer
  - Besu 25.12.0: optimizations for engine_getPayload methods & engine_getBlobsV2 and adds opcodes & callTracer to debug tracing
  - Erigon v3.3.1: fixes
  - Nethermind 1.35.4: OP Stack fixes after Jovian upgrade

Challenge period reduction discussion: 1 day (instead of 7) for Stage 1 optimistic rollups
Celo Jello upgrade: ZK fault proofs using OP Succinct Lite
Sunnyside Labs: Worldchain scaling research, CPU performance main bottleneck
ZKsync Lite (formerly ZKsync 1.0) being deprecated in 2026

US SEC:
- Depository Trust Company (DTC) securities tokenization pilot received no action letter, expected to rollout in H2 2026
  - Commissioner Hester Peirce: significant incremental step in moving markets onchain
- Ondo Finance investigation closed without charges
US CFTC:
- Spot crypto can be traded on registered exchanges
- Pilot for crypto collateral (including ETH) in derivatives markets
US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC):
- National banks can act as an intermediaries in crypto transactions
- Debanking activities of 9 largest national banks, preliminary findings
Do Kwon (Terraform founder) sentenced to 15 years for fraud & manipulation

Australia: social media ban for under 16s, platforms can’t make users provide state ID
US: Customs & Border Protection proposal to collect social media handles (from last 5 years) & email addresses (from last 10 years) for visa waiver travel
React Server Components additional vulnerabilities: denial of service & source code exposure
Justin Thaler: quantum computing & blockchains, cryptographically relevant quantum computer unlikely pre-2030, Ethereum should continue work on post-quantum primitives & emergency-response plans
Small-field hash-based SNARGs are less sound than conjectured, generic attacks against common small field proof systems reduce security by ~10 bits