• Aragon introduces the EPAA.

• Aztec publishes a Privacy Manifesto.

• Ethereum Ecosystem hits 24,000 TPS.

• Zora enables DMs with token holders.

Aragon introduced the Ethereum Protocol Advocacy Alliance (EPAA), a new organization for coordinating policy efforts among teams building onchain infrastructure. Members include Aave, Aragon, Curve Finance, Lido Finance, Spark Protocol, The Graph, and Uniswap, which collectively secure over $100 billion in assets. Formed to counter the dominance of crypto lobbying from centralized actors, the Alliance aims to protect the neutrality of the protocol layer, advance onchain transparency, preserve flexibility for innovation, and uphold global, permissionless access. The alliance will collaborate with advocacy partners such as the DeFi Education Fund, the Decentralization Research Center, and the European Crypto Initiative.

Aztec founder Zachary Williamson published a privacy manifesto confronting the dark incentives of the Information Age, namely, the monetization of human attention and data. While he shares Vitalik Buterin’s techno-optimism, he argues that technology is neutral and its outcomes depend on the incentives that drive it. He proposes a technical and moral revolution built on zero-knowledge cryptography and privacy-preserving blockchains, allowing users to prove facts without revealing personal data and reclaim their digital agency as customers rather than commodities. Williamson calls on developers to build privacy-first systems using the Noir programming language on Aztec Network, a privacy-focused Layer 2 on Ethereum.

The Ethereum ecosystem, including L2 networks, hit a record peak throughput of 24,000 transactions per second on Tuesday. The milestone came as analytics platform growthepie incorporated data from Lighter, a perpetuals-focused L2, to its ecoystem TPS tracker. Lighter topped the charts with about 3,600 TPS, followed by Base.

• Nethermind v1.35.1 release

• Zora enables DMs

• Defillama Katana report

• Lido upgrades to CCIP

• EF hosts Founders Labs

• Agentic Zero at Devconnect

• HackMD SIWE case study

• GG24 results released

• Geth ranks Glamsterdam EIPs

• The Graph introduces Ramp

• Robinhood Q3 results

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

• Fusaka-ready client releases.

• Linea activates its burn mechanism.

• ZKsync proposes a ZK value accrual system.

• Vitalik suggests 1-2 day withdrawal times.

Ethereum client teams Lighthouse, Geth, Teku, Erigon, and Lodestar have released Fusaka-ready versions of their clients. Fusaka is Ethereum’s next upgrade, scheduled to go live on mainnet on December 3, 2025, at 21:49:11 UTC. Node operators must update their client software ahead of the activation. Validators running MEV-Boost must also update to Fusaka-ready v1.10. Fusaka introduces 12 EIPs, delivering improvements in scaling, performance, and user experience. The headline feature, PeerDAS (EIP-7594), enables higher blob throughput, reducing L2 transaction costs. Blob Parameter Only forks will follow, designed to further expand blob capacity by gradually increasing per-block blob limits.

• Lighthouse v8.0.0 release

• Geth v1.16.7 release

• Besu v25.11.0 release

• Erigon v3.2.2 release

• Teku v25.11.0 release

• Nimbus v0.2.2 release

• Lodestar 1.36.0 release

• MEV-Boost v1.10 release

Linea activated its burn mechanism on mainnet, automatically burning 20% of net ETH gas fees from every transaction and using the remaining 80% to buy back and burn LINEA tokens. ETH remains the native gas token on the network. The surplus gas fees are collected by a dedicated fee contract, which executes both burns. Linea also retroactively burned all surplus fees accumulated since September 11, 2025, totaling about 18 ETH and 20 million LINEA burned to date. Linea is an EVM-equivalent ZK rollup developed by Consensys, designed to deepen alignment with Ethereum.

ZKsync published a proposal seeking to expand the role of its ZK token from governance to utility, including a new buyback and burn mechanism. The proposal aims to bring value accrual to the ZK token through two mechanisms: onchain interoperability fees, which collect fees from transfers between ZKsync chains and Prividiums, and offchain enterprise licensing, which brings revenue from banks and institutions licensing advanced ZK modules. Proceeds from the value accrual would flow into a governance-controlled system that buys back $ZK and allocates it toward staking rewards, ZK token burns, and treasury funding. The move aims to ensure that the ZKsync ecosystem benefits from the Elastic Network. The proposal is currently open for community feedback.

Vitalik Buterin published a forum post proposing to reduce the current 7-day withdrawal window for stage 1 optimistic rollups to 1-2 days. He explained that shortening the time window could reduce costs for liquidity providers by 3-7x. Vitalik noted that 1-2 days is sufficient to handle all issues except a 51% censorship attack, and proposed a “delay extension switch” to allow any security council member to extend the withdrawal window to 7 days or longer if needed. For stage 2 rollups, which aim for full Ethereum-level security, the 7-day window should remain

• FOCIL tx inclusion explained

• Stream Finance halts withdrawals

• Steakhouse no exposure to Stream

• Undisclosed exploits from Oct. 10th

• Balancer exploit was a rounding issue

• Balancer exploit analysis

• Webacy published Balancer vulnerability

• Espresso path to TGE

• Chainlink launches ACE

• BitMine buys 82k ETH

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

• Balancer V2 suffers a $110m exploit.

• EF ESP team reopens grant applications.

• S-two prover launches on Starknet.

• ZKP2P releases V3.

Balancer, an AMM protocol and pioneer of the 80/20 weighted pool design, suffered a smart contract exploit on November 3, 2025, at 7:48 AM UTC, resulting in over $110 million in assets being drained from its V2 Composable Stable Pools and Balancer V2 forks. The hack impacted multiple chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, Sonic, and Berachain. The majority of stolen assets consist of WETH and liquid staking tokens (LSTs) like wstETH, osETH, and rETH. Launched in 2021, Balancer V2 introduced a singleton Vault for enhanced capital efficiency. Balancer V2 underwent multiple audits by OpenZeppelin, Trail of Bits, and Certora. Balancer V3, deployed in December 2024, and non-composable V2 pools remain unaffected. Balancer V2 users should immediately withdraw funds and revoke token approvals.

The Balancer V2 exploit triggered various responses across affected chains and protocols to mitigate damage and freeze stolen funds. Balancer immediately paused all pausable V2 Composable Stable Pools and entered recovery mode, isolating the issue to legacy V2 infrastructure. Berachain coordinated validators for an emergency hard fork, blacklisted attacker addresses, and recovered assets from compromised pools. Sonic activated a new onchain account freeze mechanism to lock the attacker’s wallet without a hard fork, pausing affected pools. Downstream protocols like Beefy and YieldFi paused V2 integrations. Security teams from PeckShield, Nansen, and BlockSec are tracing funds, with some already blacklisted on exchanges.

The Ethereum Foundation’s Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) has reopened grant applications for Ethereum builders with a new model featuring two main grant tracks: Wishlist grants and Requests for Proposals (RFPs). Wishlist grants target broad areas of opportunity and high-level goals for the Ethereum ecosystem. RFP grants outline specific problems or opportunities with defined deliverables, timelines, and expected outcomes. ESP had paused open grants earlier to reassess priorities and ensure funding aligns more closely with the Ethereum Foundation’s strategic goals. Builders can now apply for grants across domains like cryptography, privacy, application development, security, and community growth.

StarkWare launched S-two, its next-gen open-source ZK prover written in Rust, on Starknet. S-two now proves every Starknet block, delivering 100x faster proofs and over 90% in cost reduction compared to its predecessor, Stone. The prover leverages Circle STARK technology and supports both Cairo and direct AIR definitions. S-two enables client-side proving on low-powered devices such as smartphones, supporting scalable privacy-preserving applications. It eliminates proving bottlenecks, allows anyone to sequence and prove transactions, and removes single points of failure. Future releases will include further cost optimizations.

• ACDT #60 notes

• Ethereum hits tx ATHs

• ZKP2P V3 release

• MetaMask dev hub

• Bridge Atlas episode 2

• Ethereum upgrades illustrated

• 8004 architecture outline

• Bitmine buys the dip again 

• Share goes live on Base

• Maple assets hit $500m on Fluid

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