• Ethereum Validators Association announced.

• Article on benchmarking zkVMs.

• State of Crypto 2025 report.

• Octant announces Epoch 9 results.

The Ethereum Validators Association (EVA) announced its organization for improving Ethereum validator representation in protocol development. Created by the Ethereum Community Foundation (ECF), the EVA provides a unified structure for validator coordination, research, transparency, and governance. The EVA will build open dashboards for validator performance, conduct research on validator economics and MEV, and launch a verified signaling system for validators to cast non-binding votes on EIPs. Membership is open to any node operator with at least one active validator. The association will formally launch at an event during Devconnect ARG on November 20th.

The Ethereum Foundation’s zkEVM team published an article outlining benchmarking principles and framework components for zkVMs. The goal of zkVM benchmarking is to ensure Ethereum’s scalability and security by validating that ZK-based block proving is both feasible and performant in real-world and worst-case scenarios. The main objective is to determine whether zkVMs can achieve real-time proving (RTP), generating proofs quickly enough to keep up with block production. zkVMs should be tested using Ethereum-specific workloads, stressing hashing, precompiles, and state access patterns, rather than synthetic benchmarks. The long-term goal is to make zkEVMs viable for use on Ethereum Layer 1.

Investment firm a16z released the State of Crypto 2025 report, highlighting how the crypto industry has matured this year, driven by global adoption, regulatory clarity, institutional participation, and technological readiness. The report ranks Ethereum and Base as the #1 and #2 ecosystems chosen by builders. The industry reached all-time highs in market capitalization, active users, and developer activity, while financial institutions are adopting crypto through stablecoins and tokenized assets. The report also highlights a shift in U.S. policy that has legitimized crypto. Looking ahead, a16z predicts crypto will be integrated into everyday finance, payments, and consumer applications.

Public goods funding platform Octant announced the results of its Epoch 9 funding round, distributing roughly $1 million in matching funds to 30 Ethereum content creators. Conducted in collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation, it marks Octant’s first round dedicated specifically to Ethereum-focused creators. The top three recipients were onchain investigator ZachXBT, tech media outlet The Rage, and web3 education collective Crypto Altruists. Octant funds public goods using ETH staking yields generated by the Golem Foundation.

• Ethereum Berlin Hub

• a16z TVL dashboards

• Prysm client optimizations

• zkVM verifiers are open-source

• SharpLink buys 19k ETH

• Lido Direct Staking on Linea

• Fed mentions x402

• Gemini on open banking rule

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