Gm frens, Happy Monday and Happy Merge Day

• EF launches an AI team.

• Fusaka audit contest goes live.

• MetaMask launches mUSD.

• Aave v4 targeted Q4 2025.

• Base explores a network token.

Today marks the third anniversary of Ethereum’s Merge, the upgrade that transitioned the network from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus. Since then, Ethereum has reduced its energy consumption by ~99.99%, while ETH issuance has remained deflationary. Ethereum has also activated three additional upgrades since The Merge at a cadence of one upgrade each year.

The Fusaka audit contest is now live on Sherlock, with up to $2 million in rewards available in bounty payouts for bugs found over the next four weeks. Security researchers can earn multipliers for bugs found within the first two weeks. The contest aims to test the Fusaka upgrade and surface vulnerabilities before they can impact Ethereum mainnet. Fusaka is Ethereum’s next upgrade, expected in Q4 2025. Fusaka currently includes about 13 EIPs, with Peer Data Availability Sampling as the headliner feature. Outside Fusaka, Sherlock continues to run its Ethereum Bug Bounty Program, offering rewards of up to $250,000.

The Ethereum Foundation launched the Decentralized AI (dAI) Team to make Ethereum the preferred settlement and coordination layer for AI agents. The team will focus on enabling AI agents and robots to pay, coordinate, and follow rules leveraging Ethereum, while ensuring AI doesn’t rely on centralized entities by building open, verifiable, censorship-resistant alternatives. The EF is hiring a Member of AI Staff to work on research and an AI Project Manager for coordination.

MetaMask launched MetaMask USD (mUSD), its wallet-native stablecoin pegged to the U.S. Dollar, on Ethereum and Linea mainnet. Issued by Bridge and powered by the M0 protocol, mUSD is backed by short-term U.S. Treasury bills. As the first stablecoin created by a self-custodial wallet, mUSD features integrations with lending markets, DEXs, bridges, and offers liquidity incentives on Linea. Users can buy mUSD through MetaMask’s fiat onramps, swap directly in-wallet, and spend globally via MetaMask Card at Mastercard merchants, bridging TradFi and DeFi.

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Aave released its launch roadmap for Aave V4, the next major upgrade to its lending protocol. The launch is targeted for Q4 2025, pending final milestones including formal verification, layered security audits, independent reviews, and a testnet launch. The roadmap also outlines a go-to-market strategy led by growth providers to ensure strong adoption, a smooth migration from V3, and stability through a training-wheels framework during rollout. The Aave Chan Initiative also published its “State of the Union” for the DAO, outlining a strategic doctrine focused on exiting weak L2s, consolidating dominance in profitable lending verticals, accelerating GHO stablecoin growth, and continuing token buybacks to strengthen AAVE’s value.

At BaseCamp 2025, a two-day Base event in Stowe, Vermont, Base founder Jesse Pollak announced that Base is beginning to explore the idea of a network token. While no specifics around timing, design, or governance have been determined, he emphasized the team’s commitment to building on Ethereum and in the open alongside the community.

• Testing Call #53 updates

• BPO fork schedule

• Etherealize report on Wall St.

• Privacy on Ethereum #11

• PSE 2025 roadmap

• BitMine buys 82k ETH

• EigenLayer introduces DevKit

• Boundless launches on mainnet

• Polymarket launches earnings markets

• GG24 starts 14th October

• Fusaka mega devnet

• Aragon releases Capital Distributor

• Ethereum stablecoin supply hits $166b

• Zak outlines phishing hack

• Brantly proposes Grails ENS market

• Mirror winds down

• EthereumHouse Institutional Day

• Ethresearch: Privacy Trilemma 

• 21x integrates Chainlink

• PayPal to add Ethereum support

• American Express onchain stamps

• Bank of England stablecoin cap

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

• Tether introduces the USA₮ stablecoin.

• Polymarket integrates Chainlink.

• Polygon activates Rio upgrade.

• dDocs enables secure sharing.

Tether, the largest stablecoin by market cap, announced USA₮, a new USD-pegged stablecoin designed to be U.S.-regulated and compliant with the GENIUS Act. Anchorage Digital Bank will serve as the issuer, with Cantor as reserve custodian. Bo Hines, former Executive Director of the White House Crypto Council, has been appointed CEO of Tether USA₮. USA₮ aims to provide businesses and institutions with a regulated digital alternative to cash and traditional payment systems. The launch builds on Tether’s scale, with its flagship stablecoin USD₮ reaching a market cap of $169 billion as well as Tether’s position as the 18th-largest holder of U.S. Treasuries.

Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, partnered with Chainlink to enhance market resolution accuracy and speed, starting with asset pricing markets. Polymarket integrated Chainlink’s Data Streams and Automation on Polygon PoS mainnet, enabling decentralized, timestamped, and verifiable data inputs, along with automated onchain settlement. Beyond deterministic pricing markets, the two companies are exploring ways to resolve more subjective markets, reducing reliance on social voting and minimizing resolution risks. By eliminating single points of failure, Chainlink ensures outcomes are based on cryptographic truth. Since 2020, Polymarket has settled billions of dollars in prediction market volume.

Polygon activated the Rio upgrade on its Amoy testnet, introducing Validator-Elected Block Producers (VEBloP), a new fee redistribution model between block producers and validators, and Witness-Based Stateless Verification. The updates boost throughput, shorten confirmation times, prevent reorgs, and lower node hardware requirements. Rio sets the path to ~5,000 TPS through incremental block gas limit increases and halving block time, marking a key step in Polygon’s GigaGas roadmap. The upgrade is scheduled to go live on Polygon mainnet in October 2025

ETH Strategy, a crypto-native ETH treasury protocol, introduced staking for its Perpetual Note product, ESPN. Designed to monetize ETH volatility, ESPN delivers USD-denominated yield in USDS by underwriting long-dated ETH calls while selling shorter-dated ones. Rewards for liquidity providers are distributed weekly: part of the premiums are reinvested into ETH to expand the asset base, while the rest funds staking incentives.

Fileverse updated its dDocs word processing tool to support real-time collaboration with end-to-end encryption, powered by stateless WebSocket servers (WSS) for messaging. The update also integrates the Waku messaging protocol, CRDTs for conflict-free syncing, and UCAN authentication for decentralized access control. The release also supports self-hosted setups. Fileverse allows collaborators to join documents anonymously via a link, no login or download required.

• EigenLayer enables Verifiable Reputation

• Vercel releases x402mpc

• Coop Records 2.0 release

• Rocket Pool smart node v1.17.3

• Celo support stream incentives

• LINEA Ignition program

• Recovering funds stuck on a bridge

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

• Tentative schedule for Fusaka upgrade.

• Reth postmortem on recent bug.

• Scroll pauses new gov proposals.

• BitMine buys 46,255 more ETH.

During this week’s ACDE Call #220, Ethereum core developers discussed a tentative timeline for activating Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade across testnets. Developers agreed to begin with the Holesky testnet, despite its scheduled deprecation in the coming months. Holesky’s infrastructure will be shut down two weeks after the Fusaka upgrade finalizes. Developers tentatively plan to release updated testnet client versions by September 22, activate Fusaka on Holesky during the week of September 29, proceed with the Sepolia fork in the week of October 13, and complete the rollout on Hoodi two weeks later in the week of October 27. The proposed schedule will be finalized once fork block times are confirmed during the next ACD call. Fusaka is Ethereum’s next upgrade, slated for Q4 2025 that will introduce scaling improvements through PeerDAS, an enhancement that allows nodes to verify blob data availability without downloading the entire dataset, increasing data capacity and significantly reducing costs for Ethereum rollups.

The Reth team released a postmortem on last week’s incident that caused some Reth nodes to stall due to a state root mismatch. The issue stemmed from a bug in Reth’s trie update handling, which introduced corrupted storage data during a reorg nearly 200k blocks earlier. The problem only surfaced until block 23272427. A fix and database repair tool were shipped in Reth v1.7.0. The bug was limited to Ethereum mainnet Reth nodes and did not affect OP Reth or nodes on other networks.

Scroll, an EVM-equivalent ZK Rollup, announced a pause on new governance proposals within its DAO while it works on redesigning its governance framework. According to delegate Olimpio, Scroll DAO leadership resigned earlier this week. The team will move forward with all previously approved governance proposals. The Scroll team stated that the new governance model aims to enhance efficiency, clarity, and alignment. In response to the uncertainty, the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) submitted a proposal to adjust risk parameters for assets on the Aave V3 Scroll instance, including raising reserve factors to 50%.

BitMine Immersion Technologies Inc. has acquired an additional 46,255 ETH, boosting its total Ethereum holdings to more than $9 billion. The company now owns 2.07 million ETH, representing nearly 2% of the entire circulating supply of ETH. BitMine remains the world’s largest corporate holder of ETH, with a treasury more than twice the size of SharpLink Gaming, who ranks second. BitMine’s stock price has climbed 4 % in the past day.

• ACDE #220 minutes | highlights

• CurrencyCoin takes PG 1% pledge

• ethOS ships dGEN1

• Safe supports ENS

• MTD with Preston Van Loon

• ZKsync leads RWAs on L2

• Coinbase vs SEC FOIA update

• Kakarot launches FibRace

• U.S. Treasury mixer rule

• Lemonade integrates Self Protocol

• Etherisc treasury allocations

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