The Ethereum Foundation PSE team introduced Anonymous Credentials for Trustless Agents (ACTA), an extension to the ERC-8004 standard that allows agents to prove claims about personhood, reputation, model provenance, and user jurisdiction. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify claims without revealing underlying data.

ACTA was created to address the permanent public interaction graph, linkability across sessions, lack of selective credential disclosure, lack of anonymous reputation feedback, and traceable cross-registry profiles in ERC-8004, the onchain trust standard for AI agents. The extension is currently in a draft phase. The PSE team is actively soliciting protocol design proposals.

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The Ethereum Foundation's Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) published its Q1 2026 funding allocation, distributing $9.8 million across 57 projects spanning protocol research, cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, security, privacy, and developer tooling. The quarter reflected a continued emphasis on strengthening Ethereum's core infrastructure.

A significant portion of funding went toward zero-knowledge proof research and development, including formal verification of zkVM systems and optimizations to ZK trace construction. Security and cryptography also received sustained investment, with multiple grants targeting cryptanalysis of the Poseidon hash function used widely across ZK applications.

The Q1 allocation continues a pattern of EF infrastructure investment that includes the $1M Ethereum audit subsidy, the $1M Ethereum Security QF round, the ETH Rangers security program, and the Road To Devcon 8 Academic Program, all aligned with the EF's stated mandate to protect self-sovereign computation and enable coordination at scale.

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Base announced the Azul upgrade, its first standalone network upgrade since departing Optimism's Superchain. The upgrade introduces multiproofs, enhancing security, decentralization, performance, and the overall developer experience. By combining Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) with zero-knowledge (ZK) proving, multiproofs move Base closer to Stage 2 decentralization.

Azul also streamlines the network architecture by consolidating operations onto a single execution client, base-reth-node, alongside a new consensus client, base-consensus, built on OP Kona. The upgrade is already running on testnet, with mainnet activation set for May 13, 2026. Node operators will need to transition to the new client stack ahead of that date.

Base is currently hosting a $250,000 audit competition on Immunefi running through May 4. Looking ahead, the team plans to introduce an enshrined token standard and Flashblock access lists by the end of June, followed by native account abstraction by the end of August.

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