• 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.

• EIP-7935 to increase the gas limit.

• Arbitrum supports custom gas tokens.

• Flashbots releases MEV-Boost v1.9.

• ZKsync exploiter returns funds.

Ethereum developers—Sophia Gold, Toni Wahrstätter, Carl Beek, Alex Stokes, and Dankrad Feist, among others—introduced EIP-7935, a proposal to test a raise in Ethereum's gas limit to 150 million by the Fusaka hard fork. The move aims to enhance Layer 1 execution scalability without introducing new protocol features. Currently, the Ethereum gas limit is 36 million, up from 30 million earlier this year. Increasing the limit allows each block to include more data, thereby improving network throughput. However, the significant increase will require rigorous testing by execution layer (EL) client teams, as higher gas limits may expose performance issues.

Arbitrum now supports custom gas tokens on rollup chains that use Ethereum for data availability. The update allows developers to designate any ERC-20 token to serve as the native gas token for transaction fees on their Arbitrum rollup. The custom tokens can now serve for gas mechanics and governance models. While the functionality has been available on Arbitrum AnyTrust chains, today's release expands that flexibility to Arbitrum rollups, enabling more secure and customizable deployments. Validators may still need ETH to cover operational costs on Ethereum mainnet, such as data posting or contract interactions.

Flashbots released MEV-Boost v1.9, a Pectra-compatible upgrade of its open-source software for Ethereum beacon chain validators. This update is required for all validators using MEV-Boost ahead of the upcoming Pectra hard fork, scheduled for May 7th. MEV-Boost enables validators to earn higher staking rewards by selling blockspace to an open marketplace, offering greater returns than base ETH rewards alone. Flashbots is a research and development organization focused on enabling fair and transparent MEV extraction. It also provides an MEV-protected RPC endpoint that Ethereum users can use for secure transactions.

• ZKsync hacker returns funds

• Pectra hard fork recap

• ZORA token goes live 1

• Symbiotic raises $29m Series A

• Ethereum ecosystem in Argentina

• FOSS token deployer

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