One step closer to 4-8x faster Ethereum finality! It took some time and lots of tokens, but we now have a formally verified proposal for a decoupled consensus protocol in I* (a future Ethereum upgrade)! Not yet a full spec (up next), but it includes all the key consensus-relevant details to become one. Since Ethereum aspires to be live without most of the stake online, the protocol involves many more components than a normal BFT protocol, and its correctness involves much more than standard safety and liveness. Those nuanced properties are now verified! What's more, I came away convinced that all protocol design will involve AI-assisted Formal Verification in the future, both for correctness and iteration speed. The work wasn't limited to just: Design the protocol -> Formally verify it Instead, the loop became more like: Design -> Formal Model -> Find exactly what breaks and why -> Redesign it. For a fairly complicated protocol like this one, I think having the Lean model be part of the design loop played a big role in accelerating the process. A future with agents paired with formal models is a superpower for Ethereum development, because they can then use those models to find exactly where an argument breaks down, formalize counterexamples, test proposed fixes, iterate on the protocol. Many details that would slip under the radar when asking agents (and indeed, humans) can now be specified exactly and checked by the Lean kernel. This then forces agents to be more precise and lets them make verifiable progress on their own. It's been incredible to see this play out, seeing agents find gaps and propose protocol changes to fix them. In other words, autoresearch can speed up protocol design, formal verification is here to stay, and Ethereum Finality will get faster.

Ultimately, precompiles and EVM are both the wrong place to put most cryptography support into Ethereum. The reason is that precompiles and EVM both operate on data that has to be included into the ethereum chain somehow, which realistically means included in a block as calldata. That space is limited - even with PeerDAS and blocks-in-blobs, there's a practical cap of ~8 MB/s before it starts getting uncomfortable. Remember: it's not a blockchain. It's a cryptographic world computer. Any data/computation that does not need to be in the "main thread" of data/execution should not be put into the main thread. Instead, the correct solution is... EIP-8288 maximalism. If you have any heavy computation that's self-contained, compute it and STARK it client-side (this is quickly getting faster and faster, even on phones), and push the STARK through the EIP-8288 recursive aggregation mechanism. The chain sees the fact that the computation was done and what the result is; it never needs to see the actual data and computation. This way everyone can use whatever cryptography they want, the Ethereum chain can be lean, and we never need to add more precompiles again.

This is incorrect! On the QT’d chart, consolidations (good!) are counted as exits (bad!) @beaconcha_in made the point here:

There are many ways to tap into Ethereum’s unique features. Its two unique features to me are its decentralisation, and its state: liquidity, user accounts etc, all accumulated from 11 years of continuous uptime. Decentralisation and trustlessness of the L1 have been the key to obtaining liquidity over time, including for ETH. Some use cases want to tap into the chain’s decentralisation, and build to obtain the same properties that decentralisation offers: integrity, uptime and fair access (safety, liveness, censorship-resistance). Some use cases want to tap into liquidity. This is not parasitic: this creates demand for L1-issued assets, in particular ETH. Some use cases want to tap into both! But the liquidity is only there, once again, because of the L1’s decentralisation and trustlessness. Making the L1 a better home for liquidity amplifies something that is originally there because of the L1’s core properties. In particular, L1 should serve as the root of trust for assets that go on to be deployed across various use cases. Note that this argument does not depend on whether the use case in question is offered as “an L2” or not. L1 apps, including some tokens, may offer very little of the properties that the chain offers maximally. Let us not confuse the way a use case is packaged with the properties it offers. L2s themselves come in different shapes, and at the limit blur with what one might recognise as an L1 application. So we need not pin our hopes on any one kind of package to realise the potential of Ethereum. We need not reject them either, when their success celebrates Ethereum’s unique offering to the world. We may even support their emergence, particularly so when providing them the means to succeed is aligned with improving the L1’s own core properties.

Two major pieces of Ethereum news landed today: Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, is reportedly preparing to offer institutional ETH custody, while JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, is bringing JPM Coin’s tokenized dollar deposits to Ethereum. Two giants of traditional finance embracing Ethereum and ETH. But the price barely reacted, whereas on another network, people would be expecting a major pump. There are two reasons for this. First, ETH is larger and more liquid than most competing assets, so it takes more buying pressure to move it. Second, the market already expects major institutions to build on Ethereum. Another announcement is not subverting expectations. Some people might say Ethereum is cursed: success is expected, and it only has something to lose when it disappoints. This is where Ethereum bulls diverge from bears. For years, bulls predicted the adoption now materializing before our eyes. This was NOT consensus. People said institutions would never use Ethereum, or would build everything privately. Now it’s: “That’s already priced in. Good for Ethereum, but how does it accrue value to ETH?” There are two things that mentality ignores. First, this is financial adoption, with size. The players matter, but so do the capital they commit, the assets they tokenize, and how deeply they integrate their products and services. All of that shows growing trust in Ethereum as a financial network, both for people using layer one directly and for layer twos using it for settlement. We are gradually building an internet of finance where the underlying network has one native asset: Ether. ETH secures that system and can be used directly as collateral. Bringing Bitcoin or any other asset, into Ethereum requires additional backing, bridge, or custody arrangements. Native ETH already belongs there. Why does this matter so much? Financial activity settling on Ethereum does not pay Bitcoin’s miners. Bitcoin’s own security model anticipates transaction fees replacing its declining issuance. That activity will not magically show up on Bitcoin just because its proponents expect it to. Second, the uncertainty pushed around ETH’s supply ignores what has actually happened. Since the Merge, ETH’s net supply has grown roughly 1.3% in total, while continuing to reward the stakers securing it. Stakers can earn above supply dilution, with transaction income on top. For an asset used as a store of value, that cannot simply be ignored. There is already actual substance behind ETH’s gradual recognition as a store of value. The network has matured. Proof of stake has years of operation behind it. Current SEC guidance identifies ETH as a digital commodity. The ETFs that critics said would never happen now exist, including BlackRock’s multibillion-dollar fund. Treasury companies like Bitmine and Sharplink are accumulating ETH at scale, and their holdings can produce staking income. That adds another way for investors to gain exposure, and another reason to hold the asset. So when bulls talk about ETH eventually flipping Bitcoin, then gold, this is what they are looking at: an asset with restrained supply growth, native yield, and direct usefulness in a growing financial system. You can disagree with that thesis. But “the price didn’t move” does not answer it. Fundamentals are moving int the right direction, but price is a lagging metric. Many of the things bulls expected are happening. The argument is that ETH is severely underpriced, and that the market still underestimates where it leads.

Anyone can own $ETH. We know how to put it to work. Over the last year, Sharplink has done roughly $500M worth of deals to put ETH to work across the ecosystem. These include staking deployments, a dedicated onchain yield fund, and investments for the teams leading Ethereum’s next decade. Here’s how it fits together 👇

News: JPM Coin (JPMD), @jpmorgan's USD deposit token, is now live on @ethereum. JPMD extends from Base to Ethereum L1, giving institutional clients native onchain cash that sits alongside the assets, collateral and counterparties they transact with already. J.P. Morgan has now added a cash leg to the products it already live on Ethereum mainnet, with tokenized money market funds MONY and JLTXX both already on the network. Ethereum is the home of onchain finance.

📊 MARKET: There is almost more $ETH exiting staking than there is trying to enter. Once we cross that line, it'll be something we haven't seen since late 2025.