• Worldcoin expands to the U.S.

• Vitalik outlines decentralization goals.

• ERCs for interop addresses.

• Pectra goes live on Gnosis.

Worldcoin, the digital identity project co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, is expanding onboarding to the United States after previously excluding U.S. users due to regulatory uncertainty. The announcement was made during the Worldcoin keynote event, where the team unveiled plans to bring Orb verification to six U.S. cities. Worldcoin also announced that Orbs will now be manufactured in the U.S., with 7,500 units set to be deployed nationwide. U.S. users can access the World App and claim a WLD token airdrop upon completing verification, which requires scanning their iris with the Orb. Other announcements included a Stripe integration, the launch of a Visa-compatible World Card, and upcoming support for native USDC and CCTP V2 on World Chain.

Vitalik Buterin published an Ethereum Magicians post outlining the tradeoffs of raising Ethereum’s L1 gas limit, including increased hardware and bandwidth demands on full nodes. He argues the change is net positive, as technologies like zk proofs and statelessness enable powerful nodes to simplify verification for light clients. He proposed a three-tier node model consisting of light nodes for verification and data access, medium nodes for consensus and inclusion, and heavy nodes for zk proving and block building. The goal is to keep light nodes lightweight, medium nodes moderately accessible, and heavy nodes resource-intensive but decentralized.

During this week’s EF L2 Interop Working Group call, contributors shared progress on interoperable addresses through two proposed standards: ERC-7930, which defines a compact binary format for uniquely identifying addresses across chains, and ERC-7828, which builds on it with a human-readable format that integrates with naming systems like ENS for improved UX in wallets. Together, the ERCs aim to standardize how chain, address pairs are referenced, resolving cross-chain inconsistencies. Both ERCs are open now for community feedback ahead of a planned finalization on May 9th.

The Pectra hard fork has successfully activated on Gnosis Chain, bringing account abstraction, improved validator experience, and blob scaling to the Ethereum sister chain. The upgrade also enables Type 4 transactions from EIP-7702, allowing EOAs to temporarily adopt smart contract behavior by setting custom code. Gnosis founder Martin Koeppelmann demonstrated the feature by sending xDAI to two addresses in a single transaction. Pectra is scheduled to activate on Ethereum mainnet on Wednesday, May 7, 2025.

• Vitalik’s 2025 personal focus

• Infinex introduces Connect

• Scroll vulnerability

• Coinbase vs IRS amicus brief

• SoP: alignment protocols

• Tunnl launches on Base

• Protocol Berg v2

• Lens invests in SocialFi fund

• MOVE dump scandal

• 3 billion USDT0 bridged

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

• Base reaches Stage 1 decentralization.

• RISC Zero launches a zk-coprocessor.

• BlackRock seeks to tokenize its Treasury Fund.

• Kraken supports deposits on Unichain

Base reached Stage 1 decentralization, a milestone facilitated by the launch of Fault Proofs and a 10-member Security Council responsible for governing contract upgrades. The activation of Fault Proofs enables permissionless validation. Base contract upgrades now require 75% approval from the Security Council. In Stage 1, rollups are equipped with functional proof schemes and a multi-sig override mechanism, such as the Security Council. The next milestone, Stage 2, will introduce a multi-proof system. As outlined by Vitalik, Stage 2 is the final step in rollup decentralization, where the Security Council cannot change the chain's state root.

RISC Zero launched Steel 2.0, a zk-coprocessor for the EVM that enables expressive, low-cost, multi-block logic. Steel 2.0 is designed to overcome Ethereum smart contracts limitations, including the block gas limit and the inability to access historical state, compute across multiple blocks, or react to events without relying on indexers. By offloading computation offchain, Steel allows developers to process complex logic, aggregate data across time, and act on verified event data. Developers can use Steel to build event-powered logic, query historical state from any post-Dencun block, and perform multi-block computation—all while still writing contracts in Solidity. Steel 2.0 also supports cross-chain applications on Ethereum and OP Stack chains.

BlackRock filed Form N-1A with the SEC seeking to tokenize its $150 billion Treasury Trust Fund by issuing digital DLT shares exclusively through the Bank of New York Mellon. The BlackRock Treasury Trust Fund primarily invests in short-term U.S. Treasury securities and is designed for institutional investors. The tokenized shares aim to provide an onchain record of ownership for investors.

Centralized exchange Kraken now supports deposits and withdrawals on Uniswap’s Unichain, an OP Stack-based Layer 2 network. Supported tokens include Kraken’s composable Bitcoin asset kBTC, Tether’s cross-chain native USDT0, and ETH. Users can buy BTC on Kraken and withdraw it as kBTC directly to Unichain, similar to how Kraken integrates with its Ink L2 chain.

• Ameen proposes Ethereum Shah

• Ledger integrates stablecoin yields

• Ethereum Checkpoint #2

• 2025 Ethereum events list

• Eigen Grants Oversight Council

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

• 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.