Updates
ETH's Leadership Shake-Up: Big Changes After a Rough Cycle
Frustration was at an all-time high. Just weeks ago, there was even a mini-civil war within the community. Many pointed fingers at Ethereum's leadership.
Well, change is finally here. Ethereum's leadership structure is getting a major overhaul. Let's break it all down.
#1. Ethereum Foundation Gets a Leadership Revamp
For years, Aya Miyaguchi led the Ethereum Foundation (EF) as Executive Director. But in recent times, the community had turned against her leadership. (For a deeper dive, check out my previous newsletter.)
She's transitioning from the Executive Director position to the President of Ethereum Foundation. Typically, EDs are responsible for day-to-day operations while the president is the head of the board of directors.
So, the community got what it wanted.
Two new co-executive directors will replace Aya's old role: Hsiao-Wei Wang & Tomasz K. StaΕczak.
Hsiao-Wei Wang was a core researcher at Ethereum for 7 years. And she's an active community organizer as well. She'll be focusing on the research and development side of the Ethereum Foundation.
Tomasz StaΕczak will focus on the operational side. He wasn't part of the Ethereum Foundation but has a ton of experience in leading crypto teams.
One of the biggest criticisms of EF was its lack of communication with the Ethereum community. Tomasz is already addressing this:
- He's made his DMs and Calendly public, inviting stakeholders to reach out directly.
- When Trump talked about reserve assets, he immediately took to X in order to remind projects in the Ethereum ecosystem to demonstrate their maturity.
EF leaders never used to be this proactive in communication. His active engagement with the Twitter community will go a long way in addressing the "ivory tower" problem of the Ethereum Foundation.
In most organizations, having two leaders with equal power doesn't work.
But here? It just might. Their roles are distinct—one focused on tech, the other on operations. Tomasz himself seems confident about the setup.
#2. Danny Ryan Joins Etherealize
Etherealize is a new institutions-focused marketing and product arm of Ethereum. It was funded by the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik.
Danny Ryan was a popular researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. In contrast to Vitalik, who's associated with the "public goods" culture of Ethereum, Danny Ryan is associated with the "compete and win" culture.
ETH community wanted Danny to replace Aya as Executive Director.
But he's joining Etherealize as a co-founder to Vivek Raman. With Danny onboard, Etherealize will be like a second foundation.
Imo, this is a much better solution. The old foundation has Vitalik's DNA at its core. Danny would've found it difficult to promote his culture there. With a new foundation, he can start from a blank slate.
The two foundations will be synergistic as well. There are many things EF doesn't want to do. Like business development or lobbying on behalf of Ethereum. Etherealize can fill those gaps.
#3. The EF Silviculture Society
Ethereum Foundation has created an advisory group of 15 people called Silviculture Society. It's an unpaid position with a one-year term.
All the members were loud proponents of the original cypherpunk values of Ethereum like censorship resistance and privacy. The goal is to create a channel for the community to influence the Ethereum Foundation.
There were many complaints about the announcement. But most of them didn't have any substance.
The only valid criticism was that the communication was bad. The "announcement" itself was written poorly. And the attached image looked very unprofessional.
With new leadership in place, hopefully, EF's communication will improve going forward.
Ethereum is the first smart contract chain with a lot of network effects. But it was facing a lot of issues this cycle.
A large chunk of it could be traced back to the leadership of the Ethereum social layer. With the new leadership, I'm expecting Ethereum development to accelerate.
Sponsored By Stacks
How sBTC Is Bridging Bitcoin With the Biggest DeFi Players
Bitcoin DeFi is skyrocketing—sBTC cap-2 filled in just 24 hours!
With 3,000 BTC locked in 24 hours, sBTC is proving its game-changing role in Bitcoin DeFi. In this cap, Jump Crypto and Assymetric Research became investors of sBTC.
But why does it matter?
- Jump Crypto helped fuel Solana's early boom, and Stacks has already hinted that sBTC may soon come to Solana.
- Asymmetric has secured the biggest industry protocols like Wormhole, Jump and whole chains such as Solana and Berachain.
In sum, Stacks is connecting the demand for Bitcoin with top-notch tech and investors across all crypto. Paving the way for Bitcoin DeFi's future.
If you missed cap-2, don't worry. You can sign up for Stacks alerts whenever they make more sBTC available.
Bitcoin DeFi is certainly one major narrative for the future, and I'm sure Stacks will lead it.
Technical Debate
Base vs Solana: Who's Faster?
Solana is the king of fast chains. But ETH L2s are now challenging that.
What happened? Base announced that it'll be 2x faster than Solana.
Previously, Base took 2 seconds to confirm a transaction. With the new update, users will get transaction confirmation within ~0.2 seconds. This is 2x faster than Solana, which takes ~0.4 seconds.
In the future, Flashblocks might be able to give confirmation as fast as ~0.015 seconds. That's close to being a "real-time" blockchain. But this utopia won't be real anytime soon.
What's the secret?
Flashblocks from Flashbots. Flashbots is an Ethereum research company that focuses on block building and MEV. Flashblocks is their latest product.
Blocks are the building blocks of a blockchain. Normally, applications confirm txns when a full block is built. On Base, this takes ~2 seconds.
Flashblocks will allow Base to create partial blocks that'll only take ~0.2 seconds. Base applications can use this partial block to provide faster confirmation to users. This makes Base 10x faster, potentially making it even faster in the future.
It's powered by some fancy tech like Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). If you wanna nerd out, click here.
Solana Fans Are Calling BS.
SOL maxis are mad at the claim that Base is "2x" faster.
According to them, this is misleading. Solana builds blocks in 0.4 seconds while Base still takes 2 seconds to build blocks. In their perspective, Solana is faster.
Flashblocks' partial blocks are being compared to Solana's full blocks. This is unfair.
Flashblocks was actually inspired by Solana's "shreds". According to Solana, the Base's partial blocks are technically parallel to Shreds from Solana. And therefore, only those two should be compared.
If you want to learn the technical details of this argument, click here.
But at the end of the day, user experience is trumps technicalities.
Solana apps typically wait for use full blocks. Since Base apps will use partial blocks for user feedback. This means users will feel like Base is faster, even if the underlying block times tell a different story.
Other announcements
Fast blocks weren't the only thing Base revealed. Other major updates include:
- Smart Wallet Sub Accounts are live on testnet. Better security, fewer wallet pop-ups, and an overall smoother experience.
- Base appchains are live. They'll be Layer-3 chains built on top of the Base L2. It gives extremely cheap blockspace for devs. It'll be suitable for applications like gaming.
If the L3s use "based sequencing", they'll get synchronous composability with Base L2 as well.
Base already has great distribution from Coinbase and a vibrant application ecosystem. With the new updates, Base is taking the tech to the next level.
This is an ecosystem that's always on my radar.
π DeFi Catalysts
HeyAnon has integrated CowSwap into its platform. It provides MEV-protected swaps and limit orders to Base, Arbitrum, Gnosis, and Ethereum Mainnet.
Sky Ecosystem (formerly MakerDAO) introduced Polaris. It's a fully autonomous Star (aka SubDAO) that expands USDS to Berachain.
MasterCard added Ondo Finance to the Multi-Token Network. MTN enables banks to offer digital financial services to integrated businesses.
Uniswap is partnering with Robinhood, MoonPay, and Transak to buy and sell supported crypto assets for fiat money in bank accounts.
Virtuals Protocol has shipped many updates to its GAME Framework in February. Here's a recap of all the updates.
MetaMask announced a series of updates. It includes UI/UX updates, adding Solana & Bitcoin support, gas abstraction, and more.
πͺ Airdrop Alpha
Monad testnet is already live. Being an active participant might qualify you for an airdrop. Here's a comprehensive guide for you.
Earndrop has released a thread covering all the new tasks you can do to earn potential airdrops.
Atoms Research published a full list of airdrops in February. You might be qualified for any one of the 26 airdrops.
π° Industry News
Donald Trump announced the formation of the US Crypto Strategic Reserve. It'll definitely include $XRP, $SOL, $ADA, $BTC, & $ETH.
White House is going to host the first-ever "crypto summit". It'll happen on this Friday, March 7.
SEC clarified that meme coins are generally NOT securities under US federal law. This is a positive news for the memecoin sector.
π¦⬛ X Hits
- Cash cow dashboard.
- ETHDenver takeaways.
- The 2025 Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report.
- Reports on the institutional adoption of Ethereum.
- Quantitative model of Solana's memecoin exposure.
π Meme
Until next time,
Edgy
Today's email was written by Edgy and Yayya.
DISCLAIMER: I'm NOT a financial advisor. This content is for education and information purposes only. Crypto and DeFi are risky and speculative. Please do your research before investing.
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