DeFi United technical implementation plan to restore rsETH backing, Solidity 0.8.35, Status Network merging into Linea stack
Ecosystem
- Ethereum Foundation:
- Ethereum Protocol Fellowship cohort 7: for developers aspiring to work on the protocol, clients, research & tooling; June - mid November, apply by May 13
- EF Ecosystem Support Program Q1 allocations, 57 projects shared $9.9M
- EF sold 10k ETH to Bitmine for average price of $2,387
- William Mougayar: Ethereum page, covers EF resources, community knowledge bases, white papers & teams building
- ETH metrics:
- Gas (gwei): 1 average, 0.1 - 15 (12.9 for zero net issuance)
- ETH supply change: 18k net issuance
- ETHUSD: $2,232 - $2,395 (all time high $4,946, August 24, 2025)
- ETH ETFs: 5.2% of ETH supply
- ETHBTC: 0.030 (0.166 for the Flippening)
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Enterprise
- Visa global stablecoin settlement pilot adding Base
- Coinbase Asset Management launching digital credit strategy on mainnet & Base
Applications
- DeFi United (effort to restore rsETH backing): technical implementation plan
- Kelp bridging changes: 4/4 DVN (Decentralized Verifier Networks) setup, block confirmations raised to 64 (from 42) & L2 to L2 routes deprecated
- Synthetix open to the public, live on mainnet
- Etherscan hide low value transactions (under $0.01), beta
- NeoMist (desktop app): browse .eth/.wei sites, macOS & Linux, uses Helios light client & local IPFS node/proxy
- Reminder: check when your ENS names expire
- Forgotten ETH: check for reclaimable ETH on old DEXes, NFTs, ICO escrows, ENS deed deposits & DAO refunds
- Ethereum Applications Guild: organization to support application ecosystem, funded by membership & staking reward contributions
Developers
- Solidity 0.8.35 (language): adds erc7201 (first comptime builtin), experimental flag to enable in-development features, experimental SSA-form control-flow graph code generator (address stack too deep & compilation speed in IR pipeline long term) and deprecation warnings for upcoming Solidity 0.9.0 keywords
- Fe v26.1.0 (language): adds compile-time assertions, Solidity compatible errors & panics and expands const fn evaluation
- Plank v0.1 (language): compiler, if/while control flow, variables/functions, modules/imports, compile time evaluation, reflection/type introspection and Sensei IR
- Foundry (dev framework):
- Extruder (transpiler): convert Solidity into TypeScript, experimental
- Recursive calldata decoder: supports multicalls, batched transactions & nested calls
- Walletbeat: wallet test playground
- Application layer standards (ERCs):
Agents
- Circle Gateway nanopayments: gas free USDC transfers, live on mainnet & select L2s
- OKX agent payments protocol: quoting, escrow, metering, settlement & dispute handling
Security
- Wasabi Protocol ~$5.5M exploit via compromised deployer key
- Syndicate ~$380k exploit, two bridge contracts upgraded via compromised private key
Layer 1
- Glamsterdam upgrade (targeting mid-2026):
- bal-devnet-6: launched
- Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs):
- EIP8243: Batching attestations at source
Staking
- ethsync: sync committee visualization & light client verification
- eth-valctl: CLI for managing validators via execution layer requests
- Client diversity:
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~53% (data may not be accurate)
- Staking market share: Lido 22.4% [Note: dual governance]
- Validators: 905k active (target 128k), 12k accumulating (0x02 withdrawal credentials)
- Client releases:
- Execution layer:
- Erigon v3.4.0: chaindata 4x smaller, faster startup, new RPC methods, more resilient consensus layer & native MCP server
- Nethermind 1.37.1: Flat DB opt-in, RocksDB snapshots, Block-level Access Lists, zkEVM groundwork, eth/69 default & eth/70
- Paradigm Reth v2.2.0 (medium): Block-level Access Lists groundwork, Discv5 enabled by default, adds snap/2 wire helpers & bounds P2P transaction manager memory footprint
- Execution layer:
Layer 2
- Status Network merging into Linea stack, not launching as standalone L2, gasless execution planned as optional feature on Linea stack
- Sunnyside Labs privacy boost live on Soneium (OP Stack), Startale app integration targeting June
- L2Beat Stage 1 minimum challenge period for optimistic rollups changing to 5 days (previously 7 days)
Regulation
- SBF motion for a new trial denied
General
- Security Alliance (SEAL): beware cold reachouts, malware campaigns targeting crypto
- Protocol Institute: successor to Summer of Protocols
Editor: @abcoathup
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