Uniswap voted for UNIfication, Devcon 8 November 3 - 6 at JIO World Center, Punks & Squiggles donated to MoMA
Ecosystem
- Devcon 8: November 3 - 6 at JIO World Center in Mumbai, India
- Walletbeat: wallets & local nodes, tested using only configured RPC endpoint
- Etherscan address page filters, beta
- US SEC: group chats used as gateway to investment scams
- ETH metrics:
Sponsor: Consensys
2025 was a breakout year for crypto and for Ethereum.
From regulatory shifts to digital asset treasuries and wide institutional adoption, Ethereum is reshaping global financial markets.
2026 will be even bigger as more organizations build on Ethereum.
Linea will focus on becoming a self-sustaining chain, and MetaMask will expand into more onchain assets and unlock broader real-world use.
How Consensys and Ethereum made 2025 crypto’s most important year.
Applications
- DAOs & Labs:
- Uniswap voted for UNIfication: turn on fee switch, burn fees including Unichain sequencer fees, 100M UNI retroactive burn and Labs turn off front end fees
- Aave voted against DAO controlling brand assets, 41% abstained
- Farcaster USDC lending powered by Morpho x Steakhouse
- Fileverse dDocs & dSheets adds social recovery for accounts
- NFTs:
- 8 Punks & 8 Squiggles donated to MoMA (Museum of Modern Art)
- Pudgy Penguins promotion on Las Vegas Sphere
- POAP airport rally starts January 1, mint location based POAPs at 100+ airports
Developers
- Solidity v0.8.33 (language): hot fix for internal compiler error in v0.8.32 for code that referenced/called getters generated for constant state variables
- Remix v1.5 (dev framework): seeks donations, matched by Ethereum Foundation
- Application layer standards (ERCs):
Layer 1
- Hegotá upgrade:
- Scoping timeline:
- Fork focus & headliner proposals: January 8 - February 4
- Headliner selection: February 5 - 26
- Non-headliner EIP proposals: 30 day window
- EIP7805 FOCIL readiness: proposed headliner, specs reviewed & 8 clients have prototypes
- Scoping timeline:
- Julian Ma: in-protocol gas futures, temperature check on changing transaction fees from EIP1559 to a gas futures market
- Potuz: history of justification withholding attack
- Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs):
- EIP8108: Stateless block witnesses with Verkle proofs
Research
- SoK: evolution of fast finality, 3-slot finality reduces finality & slot times without bandwidth requirements of single slot finality
Staking
- Client diversity:
- Consensus layer:
- ⚠️ Lighthouse ~52% (data may not be 100% accurate)
- Execution layer: Geth ~41%, Nethermind ~38% (estimated from self reports)
- Consensus layer:
- Staking marketshare: Lido 24.3% [Note: dual governance]
Layer 2
- L2Beat:
- Proposal to narrow stage 1 by adding security council walkaway test
- Ethereum Interoperability Layer explainer: users self execute transactions on source & destination, with cross chain liquidity providers paying gas & funds at destination and then reclaim at source
- zkSync Era Etherscan explorer deprecated January 8, download private name tags & contract verifications
- Zero Network (ZK Stack) paused
Regulation
- US SEC:
- Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang & Nishad Singh (former FTX/Alameda executives) final consent judgments
- trading platforms & investment clubs charged for allegedly defrauding retail investors of $14M via fake trading & offerings
- Brooklyn DA: man charged for allegedly stealing $16M by purporting to be a Coinbase representative; ZachXBT investigation
General
- Trust Wallet browser extension ~$7M stolen, don’t open, disable v2.68 & upgrade, users to be refunded
- Gnosis Chain hard fork recovered ~$9M in funds from November Balancer exploit
- gov/acc (governance acceleration): project coordinating research, experimentation, implementation & knowledge-building by Devcon 2026
Editor: @abcoathup
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