New Week in Ethereum 2026-01-09

Week in Ethereum News

January 09, 2026

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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.

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New Week in Ethereum 2026-01-02