New Week In Ethereum 2025-07-25

• 25 July 2025

The Ethereum Foundation published its Q2 2025 allocation update, detailing ecosystem funding initiatives across various categories including research, development, and community building projects.

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

• All Core Devs - Consensus (ACDC) #161 was held on July 24, 2025, focusing on Fusaka upgrade preparations and PeerDAS implementation progress.
  • Fusaka upgrade:
    • Confirmed timeline for devnet-3 launch in early August
    • Discussed implementation status across client teams with most reporting good progress
    • Reviewed outstanding issues with PeerDAS implementation
  • Glamsterdam planning:
    • Initial discussions on potential EIPs for inclusion
    • Agreement to begin formal scoping discussions in September
  • Client diversity:
    • Reviewed latest client distribution metrics
    • Discussed strategies to improve minority client adoption

Fusaka (Osaka + Fulu) upgrade

• PeerDAS breakout call held on July 25, 2025, focused on implementation challenges and optimizations.

  • Teams reported significant progress on PeerDAS implementation with most critical issues resolved
  • Discussed optimizations for blob data availability sampling that could reduce bandwidth requirements by up to 15%
  • Agreed on final specification details for devnet-3 implementation

• EIP-7951 (Blob carrying transactions gas cost reduction) implementation was completed by all major client teams, with final testing underway for inclusion in devnet-3.

• Verkle Tries implementers call discussed progress on stateless client research:

  • Reported benchmark results showing 40% improvement in witness generation time
  • Discussed challenges with state sync protocols and potential solutions
  • Agreed on next steps for integration with EOF implementations

Layer 1

• Gas limit discussions continued with several mining pools signaling support for a gradual increase to 45 million following the Fusaka upgrade.

  • Analysis showed network can support higher gas limits with current bandwidth availability
  • Concerns about state growth were addressed with partial history expiry now fully implemented

• QUIC adoption reached a new milestone with over 85% of nodes now supporting the protocol, according to the latest network measurements.

• BuilderNet released its July update showing improvements in block propagation times and reduced reorg rates.

Research

• Stateless Ethereum:

  • New research post detailing progress on witness compression techniques
  • Benchmarks showing 30% reduction in witness sizes using new encoding methods
  • Discussion of potential timeline for full statelessness implementation

• Secret Leader Election:

  • New proposal for implementing secret leader election in Ethereum
  • Analysis of security properties and potential attack vectors
  • Discussion of implementation challenges and potential timeline

• Account Abstraction:

  • Comprehensive analysis of design space for protocol-enshrined account abstraction
  • Comparison of different approaches and their tradeoffs
  • Discussion of potential implementation paths for Glamsterdam upgrade

Layer 2

• Build a Farcaster Mini App with Arbitrum in Minutes - New starter template released to help developers build composable, on-chain social apps using Arbitrum Stylus and Farcaster Mini Apps, enabling faster prototyping.

• StarkWare's Participation in Starknet Staking V2 - StarkWare announced its participation in Starknet's Staking V2 program, reinforcing their commitment to the network's decentralization.

• Kakarot x S-two: Bringing ZK to everyday devices - Kakarot and StarkWare's S-two prover are collaborating to bring zero-knowledge proofs to resource-constrained devices, expanding ZK technology's accessibility.

• Nexus x S-two: Building the future of scalable zkVMs - Nexus and StarkWare announced a partnership to develop scalable zkVMs using the S-two prover, aiming to enhance verifiable computation capabilities.

Stuff for Developers

• Solidity:

  • Version 0.8.30 released - The latest Solidity version introduces prague as the new default EVM version, along with NatSpec documentation improvements for enum values and several SMTChecker bugfixes.

• Allocation Update - Q2 2025 - The Ethereum Foundation's Ecosystem Support Program announced its Q2 2025 funding allocations, supporting various grassroots gatherings and breakthrough projects across the ecosystem.

Security

• CoinDCX - Rekt - $44.3 million was drained from CoinDCX on July 22, 2025. The exchange remained silent for 17 hours until researcher ZachXBT exposed the hack. The attacker funded the operation through Tornado Cash and routed funds through FixedFloat.

• BigONE - Rekt - A supply chain attack hit BigONE exchange for $27 million on July 18, 2025, when attackers compromised production servers and reprogrammed withdrawal systems to approve unauthorized transactions.

• ArcadiaFi - Rekt - An attacker exploited ArcadiaFi on July 17, 2025, using crafted swapData to trigger arbitrary calls through a trusted rebalancer contract, draining $3.6 million from user vaults during a pause cool down period.

• GMX - Rekt - $42 million appeared to vanish from GMX V1 on July 9 via a cross-contract reentrancy exploit introduced by a 2022 bug fix. The attacker manipulated globalShortAveragePrices to inflate GLP pricing, but funds were later recovered in coordinated disclosure with a $5M bounty paid.

Ecosystem

• Shipping an L1 zkEVM #1: Realtime Proving - Ethereum Foundation published a detailed article on realtime proving for zkEVMs, outlining the path toward integrating ZK proofs at all levels of the Ethereum stack.

• The Future of Ecosystem Development at the EF - The Ethereum Foundation outlined its vision for ecosystem development, focusing on maximizing Ethereum adoption while preserving its underlying values and enhancing the resilience of its technical and social infrastructure.

• All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #46 - The upcoming ACDT call scheduled for July 28, 2025, will focus on testing initiatives for Ethereum's core protocol.

• AllCoreDevs - Execution (ACDE) #217 - The next ACDE call is scheduled for July 31, 2025, to discuss execution layer developments and updates.

• Soliciting stakeholder feedback on Glamsterdam headliners - The Ethereum community is gathering feedback on potential headliners for the upcoming Glamsterdam event.

Notable at app layer

• Giza x S-two: Powering verifiable ML with LuminAIR - Giza and StarkWare announced a partnership to develop LuminAIR, a platform for verifiable machine learning using the S-two prover, bringing trustless AI applications to blockchain.

• Introducing the StarkWare Delegation Program - StarkWare launched a new delegation program allowing STRK token holders to delegate their tokens to validators, enhancing network security and decentralization.

• S-two prover - StarkWare introduced the S-two prover, described as the fastest prover for real-world ZK applications, significantly improving performance for zero-knowledge proof generation.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

• 🚨 Lido at 25.84%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
• Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
  • Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
  • Consensus layer: Lighthouse 42.71% & Prysm 30.91%
  • Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality.
• Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe.

Client Releases

• Consensus layer:

  • Lighthouse v7.1.0: Major maintenance release with hierarchical state diffs for hot state (4x less disk I/O), optimized processing of Electra SingleAttestation messages, and removal of legacy eth1 deposit contract logic.

• Execution layer:

  • Geth v1.16.1: Patch release fixing regressions from v1.16.0, including abigen v2 TryPack methods, blockTimestamp hex-encoding in eth_getLogs, and improved eth_getTransactionReceipt performance.

EIPs/Standards

• EIPs (Core, Networking, Interface):
  • EIP-2935: Save historical block hashes in state - Moved to Final
  • EIP-7939: Moved to Review
  • EIP-7773: Move EIPs 7732, 7782, and 7805 from PFI to CFI
  • EIP-7773: Add EIP-7819 to Glamsterdam's PFI

ERCs (Application Layer):

• EIP-7636: Move to Withdrawn

Onchain Stats

• Fees (via ultrasound.money):
  • Gas: 0.2 to 9.5 gwei, 1.0 gwei average; zero net issuance at 20.5 gwei
  • 2.7k ETH net issuance this week
• ETHUSD: $2507 – $2598, currently $2,582, all time high $4,878
• ETHBTC: currently 0.0236 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Regulation/Business/Tokens

• BitMine has acquired over $2B in ETH in just 16 days, becoming one of the largest Ether holders. The company aims to acquire and stake at least 5% of the total Ether supply.
• SharpLink hired a 20-year BlackRock veteran just one day after BitMine's massive ETH purchase announcement, signaling growing institutional competition for Ethereum holdings.
• BlackRock's Ethereum ETF has become the third-fastest ETF to hit $10B in assets, reaching this milestone in just 251 days since launch.
• Ether ETFs outpaced Bitcoin for 6 straight days in a rare flip, with spot Ether ETFs recording nearly $2.4 billion in inflows over the past six trading days.
• Ethereum core developer testified in Roman Storm's defense as the government rested its case in the ongoing legal proceedings.

Miscellaneous

• MEV arbitrageurs on Ethereum are becoming increasingly centralized according to new research, potentially harming network decentralization.
• Eric Trump "agrees" Ether should be over $8K as Global M2 money supply soars, with Bitcoin dominance falling below 60%, its lowest since February.
• NFT market cap surged to $6.6 billion in July according to DappRadar, representing a 94% increase as CryptoPunks lead the rebound with multimillion-dollar sales.
• Build on Bitcoin has added ZK-proofs in an upgrade toward decentralization, aiming to climb L2Beat's rankings and unlock Ethereum-level DeFi on Bitcoin.
• Societe Generale will provide liquidity for 21Shares' Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs, expanding access for institutional crypto investors in Europe.

Upcoming Dates of Note

• Aug 4-6: SBC (The Science of Blockchain Conference 2025) in Berkeley, USA
• Aug 4-16: ETH Enugu '25 in Enugu, Nigeria - First Builder Residency & Pop-up City
• Aug 9-10: ETHVietnam 2025 in HCMC, Vietnam
• Aug 14: Pragma New York in New York, USA
• Aug 15-17: ETHGlobal New York in New York, USA
• Sep 1-7: Builders Week Istanbul in Istanbul, Turkey
• Sep 4-7: ETHWarsaw in Warsaw, Poland
• Sep 5-7: EthIstanbul in Istanbul, Turkey
• Sep 7-14: ETHSafari in Nairobi, Kenya

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