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Ethereal news weekly #25

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Vitalik: EF will be smaller & more opinionated, Base Azul upgrade live with multiproofs, FTSE Russell US indexes: Bitmine & Sharplink to join

Ecosystem

  • Ethereum Foundation:
    • Vitalik: EF will be smaller & more opinionated, still in transition, should stabilize over next few months & board is expanding
      • Ethereum should be deeply impressive in CROPS (censorship resistant, open source, private & secure): e.g. provably bug-free, available chain consensus & intermediary minimization
      • ETH is most high-value product of Ethereum blockchain, EF is one node alongside other nodes & we need other heroes to help support ETH
    • EF app relations: DeFi sessions recap, roundtables at EthCC with 70+ teams
  • Devcon 8 supporters program applications open
  • ETH metrics:
    • Gas (gwei): 0.2 average, 0 - 3.5 (12.9 for zero net issuance)
    • ETH supply change: 19k net issuance (7 days)
    • ETHUSD: $1,975 - $2,142 (all time high $4,946, August 24, 2025)
    • ETH ETFs: 5.2% of ETH supply
    • ETHBTC: 0.027 (0.166 for the Flippening)

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Enterprise

  • FTSE Russell US indexes: Bitmine to join Russell 1000 and Sharplink to join Russell 2000 & 3000
  • SoFi (US national bank) members can buy, sell & hold SoFiUSD (stablecoin) in SoFi app
  • Cash App send & receive USDC including on mainnet & Arbitrum, autoconverts to fiat
  • Mastercard granted New York State BitLicense

Applications

  • DeFi United: Kelp rsETH backing restored & Aave markets operating normally
  • Privacy:
    • L2BEAT Privacy dashboard, TVL & deposit/withdrawal counts for Tornado Cash, Railgun & Privacy Pools and onchain privacy best practices
    • Kohaku SDK explainer: embed shielded pool protocols into wallet layer
  • TamaSwap (DEX): no free lunch theorem checked via Lean, onchain html interface, no protocol fees, immutable, built with Tama + Verity
  • Megapot x Protocol Guild: onchain lottery on Base, $1 tickets, 10% of ticket sales & 10% of prizes won from ticket sales via referral link goes to Protocol Guild
  • Poidh (pics or it didn’t happen) as ephemeral DAOs

Developers

  • Banteg EVM compiler benchmark, comparison of solc (Solidity) & Vyper compilers
  • Nomic Foundation Hardhat (dev framework):
    • Hardhat v3.7.0: Hardhat 3 out of beta & now stable
    • Hardhat v3.6.0: adds AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md files & skills in new projects and Solidity hooks for plugins to get compilation job errors & post-process artifacts
  • Revert.wtf (tool): error explainer (EVM, RPC, provider, wallet, account abstraction, protocol & x402)
  • Privy universal deposit addresses, users generate persistent addresses, apps specify destination chain & token and Privy handles bridging, swapping & settlement
  • Biconomy smart batching SDK (TypeScript library): built on ERC8211
  • LI.FI Intents built on Open Intents Framework (OIF)
  • Etherscan implementations for: view proxy contracts that depend on implementation
  • Sepolia testnet proposal to sunset in Q2/Q3 2027, with replacement testnet launching as PoW & reaching latest network upgrade in Q1 2027
  • Remix AI bootcamp for real world impact, 5 weeks online, starts June 15
  • Application layer standards (ERCs):
    • ERC8269: Body lease & credential broker (for ERC8264 agents)
    • ERC8270: Canonical validator wrapper
    • ERC8273: Attestation gated agentic actions
    • ERC8274: AI inference proof verification
    • ERC8275: Agent service discovery & escrow payments
    • ERC8276: Non-fungible multi-token ownerOf
    • ERC8277: Persistent identity token
    • ERC8278: Service objects (ERC721 extension)

Agents

  • Base MCP: connect Base Account and review & approve agent proposed actions

Security

  • Third-party Safe module ~$3M exploit on mainnet & Base, victims had module enabled which allowed execution of arbitrary calldata using a string from the contract
  • StablR (EURR & USDR stablecoins) exploit
  • Stake DAO unauthorised vsdCRV mint on Arbitrum
  • TheDAO Security Fund: Ethereum Security quadratic funding round results, 134 projects shared $315k in donations from ~4k donors + 637 ETH matching pool
    • Top 5 projects by matching: SEAL 911, The Red Guild, ZachXBT, Revoke.cash & SEAL Frameworks

All core devs (main protocol calls)

All core devs - consensus (ACDC) #179

  • Glamsterdam upgrade (targeting mid-2026):
    • glamsterdam-devnet-4: investigating implementation bug, plan to relaunch once fixed as glamsterdam-devnet-5 with same spec
    • ethPandaOps disruptoor (tool): trigger short & long range reorgs & forks in Kurtosis
    • Engine API SSZ: move & refactor proposal selected, led by Marius van der Wijden, faster deprecation path as can drop JSON RPC at Hegotá upgrade
    • Reviewed consensus layer EIPs currently considered for inclusion:
      • EIP8080 Let exits use consolidation queue, plan to decline for inclusion, confirm at next ACDC
      • EIP8061 Increase exit & consolidation churn, plan to schedule for inclusion as implemented in devnets, confirm at next ACDC
      • EIP8045 Exclude slashed validators from proposing, review implementation complexity
      • EIP7688 Forward compatible consensus data structures, review whether to include once devnets stable
  • Hegotá upgrade (targeting late-2026):
    • Non-headliners proposed for inclusion:
      • EIP8148 custom sweep threshold for validators
  • ACDC #180 will trial 11am UTC start as more suitable for Australian timezones

Layer 1

Research

Staking

  • Client diversity:
    • Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~54% (data may not be accurate)
  • Staking market share: Lido 22% [Note: dual governance]
  • Validators: 898k active (target 128k), 13k accumulating (0x02 withdrawal credentials)
  • Client releases:
    • Consensus layer:
      • Offchain Prysm v7.1.4 (maintenance): fixes, performance improvements & Glamsterdam upgrade work
    • Execution layer:
      • Erigon v3.4.2 (recommended): fixes state-leak that could surface after tip reorg, improved receipt cache handling & DB/state merge
      • Lambda ethrex v14.0.0: faster block execution & RLP import, adds EIP3155 opcodeTracer and DB schema changes (no resync required but can’t roll back)

Layer 2

  • Base Azul upgrade live with multiproofs (TEE & ZK provers), base-reth-node & base-consensus clients and adds Fusaka upgrade features
  • Optimism stake-based priority ordering, 4 week experiment live on OP Mainnet, participants who stake 100k+ OP get priority block positioning
  • Celo OP-Succinct Lite upgraded to SP1 Hypercube, proof generation time expected to decrease by 75%+ & proof generation costs expected to decrease by 60%+

Regulation

General

Editor: @abcoathup
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Ethereal news weekly #24