Ethereum Foundation Activates DeFi Wallet
A Safe smart wallet with 50,000 ETH was set up to take a more active role in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The EF sets up a Safe wallet.
Changes to EF leadership.
A path to Native Rollups.
World Liberty Financial buys $47m ETH.
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The Ethereum Foundation established a Safe smart wallet address to take a more active role in the Ethereum ecosystem. Foundation leadership member Hsiao-Wei Wang announced the creation of a 3-of-5 Safe wallet by the foundation. Wang stated that the foundation plans to transfer 50,000 ETH to the wallet in the coming days. As part of its activities, the foundation conducted a test transaction on Aave, likely signaling plans to deposit more funds into the lending protocol. Wang also mentioned that additional funds would be transferred to the Safe Wallets over time. Safe is the leading smart contract wallet provider with nearly $100 billion in total value held on Safes.
Vitalik Buterin announced that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is undergoing significant structural changes, a process that has been in progress for nearly a year. The changes focus on enhancing technical expertise within EF leadership, improving communication and collaboration with ecosystem stakeholders, attracting fresh talent, accelerating execution, and expanding the adoption of decentralized and privacy-focused technologies. Buterin emphasized that the restructuring explicitly aims to avoid adopting extreme ideological shifts, engaging in aggressive lobbying of regulators or political figures, or allowing vested interests to dominate the EF's direction. The announcement comes as ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin vouched for Danny Ryan and Jerome de Tychey as potential candidates for EF leadership.
Ethereum researcher Justin Drake published an article outlining a pathway to achieve native rollups on Ethereum. The proposal introduces an EXECUTE precompile, which enables trustless verification of EVM state transitions directly on Ethereum’s L1. By leveraging the native EVM execution engine, native rollups can fully inherit Ethereum’s security while eliminating reliance on governance mechanisms like security councils. The EXECUTE precompile ensures EVM equivalence, seamless compatibility with L1 upgrades, and secure transaction validation, enforced through validator re-execution or optional SNARK proofs. Native rollups simplify development, enhance scalability, and provide a secure architecture while addressing ETH value accrual.
World Liberty Financial, an Ethereum-based DeFi platform backed by Donald Trump, purchased $47 million worth of ETH over the weekend. The purchase celebrates Trump’s inauguration as the 47th U.S. President. The transactions were executed through the CoW Swap MEV-protecting DEX. World Liberty Financial's holdings now total 59,000 ETH, valued at approximately $200 million. The platform also bought $47 million worth of WBTC on Ethereum and staked a portion of its ETH via Lido Finance.. The acquisitions coincide with the conclusion of World Liberty Financial’s token sale, which raised over $300 million.
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Rollup Teams Call For Blob Increase
The Pectra upgrade will double the blob capacity from 3 to 6 blobs per block but demand is likely to outpace that capacity within months.
Rollup teams call for a blob increase.
Brave Search supports ENS Lookup.
EF 2024 Academic Grants Round winners.
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Jesse Pollak, lead builder at Base, called for an increase in blob capacity on Ethereum, stating that current blob fees are constraining L2 growth. The demand comes amid rising blob base fee costs for rollups, driven by increasing activity and competition within the current limit of three blobs per block. Over the past week, more than 340 ETH has been burned in base blob fees. Optimism core contributor Karl Floersch emphasized that blob scaling remains the most critical feature both during and after the Pectra upgrade. The upcoming Pectra upgrade is set to double the blob capacity to six blobs per block, but the measure is expected to serve as only a temporary fix, with demand likely to outpace capacity within months. A medium-term solution, PeerDAS, a decentralized data availability sampling system, is planned in Fusaka, the fork after Pectra, to address the blob market.
Brave Search now supports resolution for ENS domain names, enabling users to instantly search any .eth second or top-level domain to view wallet balances directly in search results. The feature displays ETH and ERC-20 token balances across EVM chains, including Ethereum, Base, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Polygon. ENS is the leading naming protocol that turns hexadecimal wallet addresses into human-readable names, with nearly 2 million active .eth names registered to date. Brave is a privacy-focused browser that processes over 1.2 billion queries monthly. Users can access the ENS lookup on Brave Search, with or without the Brave Browser.
The Ethereum Foundation announced the grantees from its 2024 Academic Grants Round, a grant series designed to support Ethereum-related academic work addressing critical challenges in cryptography, consensus mechanisms, security, and execution. A total of $1.7 million was allocated across 41 selected grantees, which includes researchers, universities, and students. The eight grants categories included: Client Engineering, Consensus Layer, Cryptography and Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Cybersecurity and Privacy, Economics and MEV, Formal Verification, P2P Networking, and Society and Regulation. Any researchers who missed the deadline for the Academic Grants Round are encouraged to join the Ecosystem Support Program (ESP).
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28% Of Validators Signal Gas Limit Increase
Over 28% of validators now signal a block gas limit greater than 30 million.
28.8% of validators signal a gas limit increase.
Pyth introduces Pyth Lazer.
Web3.js is sunsetting in March.
Methods for optimal blockchain resource allocation.
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According to data shared by Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter, over 28% of validators now signal a block gas limit greater than 30 million. Raising the block gas limit allows each block to contain more data, which improves transaction throughput. An increase of 10 million gas could reduce Layer 1 transaction fees by an estimated 15-33%. The adjustment does not require a hard fork; validators can simply raise the gas limit when proposing blocks by modifying their node configurations. When more than 50% signal for an increase, the block gas limit will automatically increase to the next agreed-upon level, which is currently targeted to be 36 million gas. Validator operators can learn more by visiting pumpthegas.org.
Pyth Network unveiled Pyth Lazer, an advanced ultra-low-latency oracle solution tailored for high-frequency trading, derivatives, and perpetual futures protocols. Pyth Lazer delivers 1-millisecond price updates, supports up to 20 price feeds per transaction, and operates with just 15,000 compute units for 100-byte proofs. It provides real-time insights into market depth, bid-ask spreads, and features customizable frequencies. Pyth Network powers DeFi applications with reliable offchain price feeds sourced from exchanges and market makers. Pyth Lazer is 400 times faster than the legacy Pyth Core oracle, setting a new benchmark for speed-sensitive DeFi protocols. Initial adopters of Pyth Lazer include Orderly Network, Drift Protocol, and Ethereal.
Web3.js, a TypeScript interface for Ethereum, will archive its libraries on March 4, 2025, as ChainSafe is transitioning away from maintaining the library. With the growth of alternative frameworks like Viem and Ethers.js, ChainSafe will shift its focus to new projects while offering support to developers migrating from Web3.js. As a framework, Web3.js enabled developers to build applications by providing tools for interacting with Ethereum smart contracts, accounts, and nodes. The transition will follow a structured migration plan, including comprehensive documentation, security updates, support via GitHub and Discord, and migration guides for Ethers.js and Viem. The process will conclude with transferring NPM access rights to the Ethereum Foundation.
Ethereum researcher Barnabé Monnot published an article examining alternative methods for metering and pricing resources such as computation storage, and data handling, focusing on the trade-offs between transaction-level and block-level metering and the role of mediated pricing. The post argues that block-level metering and mediated pricing can lead to better resource allocation and scalability.
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