• Exponential gas limit increase proposal.

• Court bans OFAC from sanctioning Tornado Cash.

• DEF petition for Tornado Cash developers.

• EOF is removed from Fusaka.

Ethereum researcher Dankrad Feist introduced EIP-9698, a proposal to exponentially increase Ethereum’s gas limit by 100x over the next four years. The plan begins with a starting gas limit of 50 million on June 1, 2025. Under the proposed schedule, the gas limit would grow to 5 billion gas per block after four years. The proposal does not change Ethereum’s consensus rules, but instead modifies default client behavior. Clients will automatically vote to raise the gas limit at each beacon chain epoch, following a deterministic exponential schedule, unless manually overridden by the user. The proposal replaces manual gas limit voting with a predictable and transparent schedule.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman permanently barred the Treasury’s OFAC agency from reimposing sanctions on Tornado Cash. The decision follows a November 2024 Fifth Circuit ruling that found OFAC exceeded its authority when it sanctioned Tornado Cash smart contracts, after which OFAC removed Tornado Cash from the SDN list. However, OFAC claimed it did so at its own discretion, leaving open the possibility of future sanctions. The federal court rejected OFAC’s argument and issued a final judgment prohibiting re-sanctioning. While the sanctions have been lifted, criminal charges against Tornado Cash developers remain ongoing.

The DeFi Education Fund (DEF) launched a petition urging the Trump administration to end its criminal prosecution against open-source software developer Roman Storm. The DeFi Education Fund says that the Biden-era DOJ adopted an unprecedented legal theory that unfairly holds developers liable for how others use their code, even when they have no control over users. The group says that the prosecution contradicts FinCEN guidance issued during Trump’s previous term, which made clear that self-custodial, peer-to-peer protocol developers are not money transmitters.

During Interop Testing #34, Ethereum core developers made a final decision to exclude EOF from the Fusaka hard fork. Tim Beiko cited split community support, the urgent need to ship PeerDAS, unclear implications of the proposed EOF variant, and process shortcomings within ACD as key reasons for its removal. Developers will now shift focus to PeerDAS and scalability. Previously excluded from Dencun, EOF may be reconsidered in a future upgrade such as Glamsterdam. Going forward, core devs aim to prioritize developer needs and strong consensus in EIP decisions

• EF Vision statement

• EF on next chapter

• EF Management Board updates

• Mastercard unveils stablecoin settlement support

• Scroll reaches Stage 1

• Ethereum EL scaling roadmap

• Stablecoin supply hits ATH

• Ethereum ATH activity metrics

• Farcaster hits 100k wallets

• Oku supports Lens Chain

• Trust Wallet stablecoin earn

• End goal is non-ECDSA accounts

• Owocki: Fair fees formula

• Ethereal Season Zero update

Disclaimer: Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.

• Debate over removing EOF.

• Gitcoin winds down Grants Stack.

• Pectra mainnet client releases.

• Solidity developer survey results.

Ethereum community members are pushing back against including EVM Object Format (EOF) in the Fusaka upgrade due to concerns such as added complexity. EOF is a set of 12 EIPs aimed at improving EVM bytecode validation through an opt-in container. Major libraries like Solady, OpenZeppelin, and Uniswap would need to be rewritten to support EOF. Opponents include Paradigm CTO Georgios Konstantopoulos, who, despite earlier support, now advocates for EIP-7912 instead, a proposal that introduces deeper stack operations. Curve founder Michael Egorov also argued that the positive impact of EOF is smaller than the cost of getting it production-ready from the current state. Ethereum developers are expected to make a final decision on Monday’s interop call, where they will revise the scope or fully remove EOF from the Fusaka upgrade.

Gitcoin is winding down its Grants Stack technology and the related Grants Labs business unit by the end of May 2025. Gitcoin cited financial reasons, with Grants Labs generating approximately $1M per year in revenue while incurring around $3M per year in expenses. Gitcoin will provide transition support to partners currently relying on Grants Stack technology. Looking ahead, Gitcoin will refocus on evolving the Gitcoin Grants Program, enhancing GTC governance, and deepening its commitment to the Ethereum ecosystem and community. According to Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki, the quarterly grants rounds are expected to continue being funded potentially through 2029.

Client teams have released production-ready software versions with support for the Pectra upgrade, scheduled to go live on May 7th at 10:05 UTC during epoch 364032. Node operators must update both their Execution and Consensus Layer clients to the latest versions before activation. Pectra introduces 11 core EIPs with major improvements to account abstraction, validator UX, and blob scaling. A watch party is scheduled on the Ethereum YouTube channel 45 minutes before the fork.

• Solidity Developer Survey results

• Nimbus v25.4.1 release

• Lighthouse v7.0.0 release

• Children's Book on EIP-7918

• Succinct introduces vAps

• Ethproofs Call #1 recording

• Superlend introduces Superfund

• Lens Spring hackathon

• Morpho liquidation bot

• Coinbase partners with PayPal

Disclaimer: Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.

• The Federal Reserve rescinds crypto guidance.

• EtherFi introduces a DeFi Bank product.

• Base targets 250 Mgas/s by the end of 2025.

• Nethermind multi-client support for builder

The Federal Reserve Board announced the withdrawal of its previous guidance on the involvement of banks in crypto-asset and stablecoin activities. The withdrawal includes its 2022 supervisory letter, which required state member banks to notify the Federal Reserve before engaging in crypto-related activities. The Board is also withdrawing a 2023 supervisory letter related to the nonobjection process for dollar token activities and is joining other regulatory agencies in rescinding two 2023 joint statements on crypto-asset exposure. The decision follows the FDIC's move to also rescind its prior guidance on crypto activities for banks.

EtherFi introduced its DeFi banking solution, offering a non-custodial alternative to traditional banking services. Unlike conventional banks, EtherFi’s DeFi bank does not accept user deposits but provides a full range of financial services built on DeFi. Users can easily fiat onramp and offramp, deploy assets into stablecoins or crypto vaults, and engage in staking and swapping. The DeFi banking solution combines EtherFi’s Stake, Liquid, and Cash products, all integrated into a single app. Stake is EtherFi’s staking and restaking product. Liquid offers a managed DeFi strategy vault for deploying ETH into DeFi apps with controlled risk. And Cash enables users to spend and borrow against their EtherFi balances.

Base announced its new goal to raise its network's gas target to 250 Mgas/s by the end of 2025. In Q1 2025, the network reached 25 Mgas/s, a 10x increase from its initial gas target at launch. By the end of Q2 2025, Base is on track to reach 50 Mgas/s. The ramp-up in gas capacity aims to reduce network congestion and enable more transactions to be processed within each block. To achieve its goal, Base has identified key bottlenecks. One of the major challenges is L1 data availability, which will be improved through capacity increases in the upcoming Ethereum upgrades. Additionally, Base is migrating from Geth to Reth clients to improve execution performance and will upgrade its Fault Proofs to MT64Cannon to optimize memory usage.

• ACDE #210 summary

• Nethermind multi-client support for rbuilder

• EF seeks Collaborative Funding Coordinator 

• DefiLlama releases Unlocks Calendar

• Enzyme deploys on Base

Disclaimer: Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.