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GM, Tim here.

Heres what caught my DeFi-eye recently:

Ethereums core developers are targeting the first quarter of 2025 for the networks next major upgrade.

The plan was solidified in the latest Execution Layer Meeting, a fortnightly gathering of Ethereum developers.

Dubbed Pectra, the hard fork will introduce several new EIPs or Ethereum Improvement Proposals with a focus on user-centric improvements.

Perhaps the biggest change planned for Pectra is Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterins EIP-7702.

The EIP, which Buterin wrote in just 22 minutes, aims to speed up the adoption of Account Abstraction.

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Account Abstraction promises to make Ethereum more intuitive and safer to use.

It gives Ethereum wallets the ability to programme transactions, allowing blockchains to replicate services banks and other money-transmitting services offer, such as scheduling payments.

Pectra will also introduce the EVM Object Format through a group of 11 EIPs to make it easier for developers to introduce new features and deprecate old ones.

Solana Labs is deep in development for its second smartphone dubbed Chapter 2.

DL News Liam Kelly sat down with Steven Laver, the projects lead software engineer.

This has that big, skys the limit energy, Laver told DL News in a rare interview. This feels like madness, but at the same time, this feels like the end result.

Solanas plan for Chapter 2 is ambitious.

It wants to liberate crypto from desktop computers and the dominance of app platforms.

The Apple App Store has removed crypto apps most notably MetaMask in October. It was later reinstated.

Both the Apple App Store and Googles Play Store charge developers fees between 15% and 30%.

Solana, Laver said, will offer an alternative.

We take a much lighter hand with our policy, he said. Were trying our best to get out of the way.

Consensys CEO Joe Lubin says his company could use crypto-native methods to tap public investment.

If we do go public in some form, weve always been biased to using our own technology to do something, Lubin told DL News.

Consensys is one of cryptos biggest companies. Its behind several widely-used tools such as the MetaMask wallet and infrastructure suite Infura.

In the crypto world, many view projects tokenisation or airdrop events in which a token is created and distributed to its most loyal users as akin to initial public offerings.

For years, there have been hints about a MetaMask airdrop. With more than 30 million users, the distribution of a MetaMask token would make quite a splash.

Lubin said Consensys is also eyeing acquisitions.

The board just approved something, he said. Were very active.

Other than hinting it was a venture in the cybersecurity area, Lubin was coy on the details.

Deposits to Ethereum layer 2 blockchains just hit an all-time high of $47.4 billion, per data from L2Beat.

(L2Beat)

But in Ether terms, token have been flowing out of layer 2s since an all-time high on May 13.

(L2Beat)

Ethers 25% rally since Bloomberg Intelligence analysts revised their odds of a spot Ethereum ETF on May 20 has helped buoy the metric.

VOTE: Redacted rebrands to Dinero Protocol

VOTE: Radiant DAO supports protocols expansion to Base

VOTE: CoW DAO lowers bonding requirements for CoW Protocol solvers

DefiLlama dev 0xngmi proposes a new lending protocol optimised for looping redeemable assets, like Ether and its liquid staking and restaking tokens.

Uniswaps DAO will finally vote on whether to change the protocol so its fee mechanism can reward UNI token holders.

Got a tip about DeFi? Reach out at tim@dlnews.com.

The rest is here:

Vitalik Buterin's 22-minute proposal set to go live in next Ethereum upgrade - DLNews

Ethereum layer-2s arent just about scaling theyre also a rallying point for subcultures that grow the Ethereum ecosystem more than the single chain could do alone, says Vitalik Buterin, one of the creators of Ethereum.

In a May 29 blog post on Buterins self-hosted blog, the Ethereum co-founder examined the benefits of layer-2 blockchains outside of technical innovation, arguing that this layer also serves as a breeding ground for crypto subcultures.

One of these subcultures includes old-school cypherpunkswho build infrastructure and tools but are hands-off about how they are used, while the philanthropic regens are focused on providing the community with public goods.

Then there are also speculation-driven degens that seek to profit from trending memecoins or nonfungible tokens.

Buterin explained that these subcultures, first identified by Ethereum researcher Prof. Paul Dylan-Ennis, have resulted in several different approaches to scaling, virtual machine design, and application choices.

It shows how layer 2s have become the ultimate playing field for action, Buterin said.

However, Buterin warns that blockchain developers should understand that the decisions they make to attract a certain audience could also exclude others.

These protocols would also find it much more difficult to attract non-mercenary core developers and researchers, he added.

Buterin is optimistic that all subcultures on Ethereum layer 2s can be balanced by the concept of cultural pluralism, which would ultimately benefit the Ethereum ecosystem.

[Cultural pluralism allows] one subculture to focus on core development while another focuses on growing the edges of the ecosystem, Buterin explained.

Buterin highlighted that few cultural specialties have emerged on Ethereums layer-2s, such as more women taking up more leadership roles at Optimism and ZKSyncs commitment to remain simultaneously cypherpunk and user-friendly.

Related: Vitalik Buterin is cooking up a new way to decentralize Ethereum staking

He also acknowledged many challenges lie ahead from clashes between these subcultures as a result of incentive misalignments but hes confident they can be resolved in due course.

Ethereum is an ongoing experiment, and part of what excites me about the ecosystem is its willingness to tackle difficult problems head-on.

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Vitalik Buterin: L2s are 'cultural extensions' of Ethereum - Cointelegraph

Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin says Consensys is willing to spend millions of dollars to challenge the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) enforcement campaign against the broader Ethereum ecosystem in the United States.

Speaking exclusively on the Decentralize with Cointelegraph podcast, Lubin unpacked the finerdetails of Consensys decision to take preemptive legal action against the SEC. Listen to the full podcast below.

The Ethereum co-founder believes the financial and operational costs incurred by the cryptocurrency ecosystem due to the SECs regulate by enforcement policies are hard to quantify.

Were all in. But we should think about the costs weve already incurred and the costs that our entire ecosystem keeps incurring, Lubin told Cointelegraph.

The Consensys CEO said the SEC had been carpet bombing the entire ecosystem with enforcement actions, forcing companies to search for and produce an enormous amount of documents to appease the U.S. securities regulator.

Related:Ethereum ETF approvals becoming giant political issue Joseph Lubin

Lubin said that small startups in the cryptocurrency space threatened with legal action by the SEC are being hamstrung by an inability to raise money:

Lubin revealed that Consensys was preparing to pay tens of millions of dollars in legal fees to take on the SEC for determining internally and secretly that Ether (ETH) is a security.

Everybody keeps saying its a commodity. Yet he cant bring himself to say that its a security. Hes punishing everybody in our ecosystem as though theyve already determined internally, secretly, that it is a security, Lubin added.

The Ethereum co-founder also discussed Ethereums ongoing roadmap, the importance of modularization, and the layering approach for scalability. He explained how the technologys scalability has matured, enabling diverse applications and broader adoption.

Mature engineering systems modularize for effectiveness and efficiency. Our ecosystem is modularizing and layering, and thats great. The pains that some experience are around this divergent phase of achieving scalability, Lubin explained.

The Consensys CEO said that Ethereum has achieved horizontal and vertical scalability, which will eventually allow for more layers of complexity.

Diversity of solutions is an important step in allowing Ethereums infrastructure to converge, allowing software development kits to enable chain abstraction and single coherent view of the ecosystem.

Lubin said the end goal is an intents-based architecture in which the many parts of Ethereums network seamlessly carry out the necessary communications and transactions to meet a users specific wants.

Youre talking to your wallet and saying, I want some Solana tokens, or I want to play a game. It just goes ahead, does all the necessary bridging and swapping, and puts the requisite number of tokens into your MetaMask, Lubin explained.

This eventuality will require artificial intelligence (AI) tooling and solver networks and highly scalable, highly diverse machinery underneath. Lubin drew comparisons to the internet of today, which runs on a wide variety of different kinds of databases for different purposes.

The Ethereum co-founder also commented on staking, the return on investment for validators, and the inherent risks. Lubin unpacked how stakeholders perceive staking and its importance in the Ethereum ecosystem.

EigenLayer was another point of discussion, with Lubin explaining how innovations like restaking and elastic security resources will transform startup operations in the blockchain space.

The Consensys CEO also discussed the Solana (SOL) ecosystem and how Bitcoin (BTC) shaped his journey into the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

Lastly, he recapped Vitalik Buterins ongoing influence on the Ethereum ecosystem and his broader vision. Joe highlights Vitaliks role in transitioning Ethereum and his involvement in global initiatives for technological adoption.

Listen to the full episode of Decentralize with Cointelegraph on Cointelegraphs podcast page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your podcast platform of choice. And dont forget to check out Cointelegraphs full lineup of other shows!

Disclaimer: This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

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Exclusive: Joe Lubin unpacks SEC battle, Ethereum roadmap and Vitalik Buterin - Cointelegraph

Ethereums much-debated rollup-centric road map was the right call, but comes with its own set of pitfalls, according to the blockchains co-founder, Vitalik Buterin.

Ethereum has ambitions of serving as a world computer the rails on which a new set of leaderless, user-owned businesses and organisations will run.

But the blockchain is slow and expensive.

In their quest to build a blockchain that can serve billions of users reliably and affordably , Ethereums team of developers decided the blockchain should expand through many complementary blockchains rather than through improvements to Ethereum itself.

Doubling down on these complementary blockchain s called layer 2s or rollups, in crypto-speak was the right call, Buterin argued in his influential blog last week.

This is powerful, and enables a lot of creativity and independent innovation, he wrote.

The rollup model has created a diverse community that is still united by a shared set of values, he said.

Layer 2s allow subcultures to emerge that are armed with substantial resources, and a feedback loop that forces them to learn and adapt in order to be effective in the real world, Buterin wrote.

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In general, every Ethereum layer 2 has a unique soul: some combination of Ethereums culture, together with its own particular twist.

But this happy status quo shouldnt be taken for granted, he said.

Coordination is difficult, with little incentive for competing layer 2 blockchains to collaborate, according to Buterin.

Layer 2 blockchains and their communities could start acting like separate universes, with little cross-pollination between them, he wrote.

Alternatively, some layer 2 blockchains might come to dominate, snuffing out Ethereums pluralistic ethos for a monoculture.

Whether due to shared human biases or shared economic incentives (or too strong of a unified Ethereum culture), everyone ends up looking in similar places for what applications to build and perhaps even what technical choices to make, he wrote.

Buterin suggested layer 2 blockchains coordinate by subsidising the development of shared infrastructure

There is a lot of value in trying to expand on these ideas, and keep working to make the best of Ethereums unique advantage as a pluralistic ecosystem.

Layer 2 blockchains have boomed in recent years.

According to crypto research site L2BEAT, almost 100 layer 2s are active or in development.

Existing layer 2 blockchains have processed almost twice as many transactions as Ethereum itself over the past year, according to data collected by Jack Gorman, a data scientist at venture capital firm Variant Fund.

Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at aleks@dlnews.com.

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Ethereum's rollup model comes with risks, Vitalik Buterin warns - DLNews

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has demonstrated his unwavering commitment to privacy in the cryptocurrency sector by donating 30 ETH, valued at approximately $113,000, to the legal defense fund of Tornado Cash developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm.

This donation highlights the significance of their cause and Buterins dedication to privacy rights.

Etherscan datarevealsthat Buterin donated to the Free Pertsev and Storm defense fund on the decentralized fundraising platformJuiceboxon May 30. As of this writing, the fund has accumulated 591 ETH, equivalent to $2.2 million, to support the developers legal battles.

Pertsev and Storm have faced significant legal challenges due to their involvement with Tornado Cash, a crypto privacy protocol. The Dutch court sentenced Pertsev to 64 months in prison for laundering $1.2 billion through Tornado Cash between July 2019 and August 2022. He has appealed the verdict at the s-Hertogenbosch Court of Appeal in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Storm has been detained in the US since 2023, with his trial scheduled for September.

Vitalik Buterin has consistently advocated for privacy in the crypto space. He has published several papers and suggestions on enhancing privacy on Ethereum, reinforcing his support for tools like Tornado Cash. During a recent fireside chat, Buterin reiterated his perspective on privacy.

Im supportive of people working on privacy things. I hope that things go in a good direction within the ecosystem. And you know, I also hope that governments see the value of this, Buterin explained.

Read more:Tornado Cash: Everything You Need To Know

Ethereum co-founder Buterins donation to the Tornado Cash developers highlights his commitment to privacy rights. He remains hopeful about the development of advanced privacy tools, highlighting their importance in the digital era. Buterins unwavering support and advocacy bring out the critical role privacy will play in the future of digital transactions.

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Vitalik Buterin Supports Tornado Cash Devs with 30 ETH Donation - BeInCrypto