"Ethereum is not a democracy" "ETH Holders don't get to decide the direction of the network" "We know what's best for you, just comply" "It's math and the math says you are wrong" Just some quotes of the pro-issuance I have seen around lately. Are you guys insane? There seems to be a complete disconnect between the current researchers/core devs pushing this proposal and the ethereum community.

Ethereum is for shipping. Here are 22 things the Ethereum ecosystem launched, upgraded, and announced over the past month. 0/ Ethereum hit a new all-time high of 72.8 Million monthly transactions, the highest in network history. 1/ @ethereumfndn, @chainlink, and @Nethermind launched a $1M audit subsidy program to help Ethereum builders access high-quality security reviews. 2/ South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, Upbit, announced plans for GIWA Chain, an Ethereum L2 built on @Optimism. 3/ @AragonProject introduced Permissions Audits to help protocols secure roles, multisigs, and admin systems. 4/ @fileverse shipped Comments v2, improving the collaboration experience, with privacy by default. 5/ The Ethereum Applications Guild (@EthAppsGuild) launched to support Ethereum-native apps and real-world adoption. 6/ Privacy went live on @Optimism with confidential computing support on OP Mainnet. 7/ @StarkWareLtd brought native proof verification to Starknet mainnet with Shinobi, enabling private trading flows and OTC settlement. 8/ @worldcoin launched World ID 4.0, expanding proof of human credentials across apps, enterprises, and AI agents. 9/ Applications on Ethereum hit ~$310B in user deposits. 10/ @l2beat released a new interactive interoperability map showing how value moves across Ethereum’s expanding ecosystem. 11/ @AlchemixFi launched V3, the latest version of its self-repaying, non-liquidating loan product, with higher capital efficiency and improved peg mechanics. 12/ @OfficialMoonDAO raised $172k + from 157 contributors to send the man who coined the “overview effect” to space. 13/ @ethereumfndn announced the Road to @EFDevcon 8 Academic Program, supporting regional research and academic events ahead of Devcon. 14/ Ethereum core contributors gathered in Svalbard for Soldøgn Interop, a week-long event focused on hardening Glamsterdam implementations to help scale Ethereum securely. 15/ @basepaint_xyz hit 1,000 straight days of onchain art creation, with 121M+ pixels painted and $1.5M + distributed to 4,000+ artists. 16/ New Ethereum community hubs launched in Hong Kong and Floripa, growing local coordination and ecosystem activity across Asia and Latin America. 17/ The EF’s ETH Rangers public goods security program wrapped after helping recover or freeze $5.8M, reporting 785+ vulnerabilities, and identifying ~100 North Korean IT workers targeting Web3 teams. 18/ @centrifuge launched a tokenized S&P 500 fund on @base, bringing 24/7 onchain index exposure to non-U.S. users. 19/ @0xcatalysis launched Covered Vaults on Ethereum, DeFi vaults with built-in onchain risk coverage backed by delegated capital. 20/ @Uniswap processed $3T in all-time volume on Ethereum mainnet. 21/ @RAILGUN_Project hit $5 billion of total all time private volume.

.@hwwonx has been a steadfast contributor to the Ethereum ecosystem for a decade. I still remember her early days in the Ethereum research community, first outside the Foundation and then inside it, and the thought and care she put into making Ethereum research and consensus work more organized and legible. At the same time, she put a lot of work into building an excellent Ethereum community in Taipei, with people and events that were among my favorites. Last year she, along with @tkstanczak, voluntarily took on the burden of what is perhaps the most challenging position in the Ethereum Foundation, at one of the most challenging times for Ethereum - and realistically, a challenging time for all of humanity. She handled the task skillfully and gracefully, and has constantly strived to find and insist on outcomes that are right both for the Ethereum protocol and for the human beings that build and maintain it. I look forward to her next adventures.

FM Speaker Highlight: @PingChenTW Ping Chen is a blockchain engineer and entrepreneur with over ten years of experience in Taiwan's Ethereum community. At @bsostech, he focuses on protocol design, financial engineering, and turning experimental ideas into working applications. Can't wait to have him at #FM26#. FUTUREMODE 2026 📍 Taipei Expo Dome | Sep 4–6, 2026 🌐 🏟 Get Your FM26 Pass Local - International -

We're looking forward to attending the Asia Onchain Finance Summit this week hosted by Hong Kong Ethereum Community Hub (@ethereumhkhub). We'll discuss how institutional finance is evolving onchain and a lot more.

Honored to have shared the stage with @VitalikButerin and the EF team at the launch of Asia's first Ethereum Community Hub. Hong Kong continues to impress. The density of talent across ETH, finance, and AI keeps compounding. Moments like this clarify exactly where the next chapter of onchain finance is being written. Deep thanks to @SNZHoldings for making this happen. @AyaMiyaguchi, @henrychen_cy

I'm at the EthHub HK opening ceremony. Vitalik laid out his vision for how the Ethereum community should approach "building a new tower for Ethereum." I'll be on a panel representing Neo at Web3 Festival HK on the 23rd.

I'm sad to report that the AA collab between 8130 and 8141 (Frames) broke down last week, and Base and Ethereum are now going separate ways to implement different AA standards. I want to share some reflections on this collab and on the future of the EVM. For a long time, the EVM has been a unifying force between L1 and L2s. Thanks to a standard account model (EOA) and a standard transaction type (EIP-1559), users have been able to enjoy their wallets working seamlessly across EVM chains. Similarly, a AA standard shared across L1 and L2s would ensure a consistent multi-chain UX for smart accounts, including post-quantum (PQ) accounts which we will eventually all use. As the crypto industry matures, however, L1 and L2s are starting to diverge in the values they provide and the use cases they target: - For the L1, it's all about CROPS -- censorship-and-capture resistance, open source, privacy, and security. In short, Ethereum L1 wants to be the most decentralized programmable settlement layer of the world, which is what makes it a good base layer for L2s in the first place. - For L2s, it's all about scaling, customization, and compliance -- things that commercial and enterprise use cases demand, and that the L1 does not provide. These diverging needs have pushed the shared layer -- the EVM -- to its limit, and AA proved to be the breaking point. While L1 and L2s both value core AA use cases such as gasless transactions and passkey wallets, they differ sharply in what these features must comply with: - For the L1, AA transactions must be uncensorable, private, and quantum-resistant, which call for a transaction type optimized for PQ signature aggregation and privacy protocols, and an account model that can be freely programmed and extended by developers without permissions from the chain. These needs lead to AA standards such as ERC-4337, EIP-7701, and now EIP-8141 aka Frame Transactions. - For L2s, AA transactions must work at high scale, and they must be legible such that the protocol can enforce clear rules about what kinds of accounts/transactions are permitted vs not. These needs lead to AA standards such as Tempo Transactions and now EIP-8130 by Base. With the AA collab, the authors of 8130 and 8141 tried to define a shared standard that can work for both L1 and L2s. While we identified a number of technical solutions, they all required one side or the other to compromise at least a little bit on their core goals. But ultimately, Ethereum wanted to be the best version of Ethereum, and Base wanted to be the best version of Base, and while both sides acknowledged the benefits of ecosystem interoperability, it was ultimately secondary to the need for each chain to achieve their core goals. So separate ways we went, putting the burden on wallets to deal with the fragmentation that ensues. Now, just because we ended up with fragmentation doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad outcome. If reducing fragmentation comes at the cost of homogenizing chains to the point that they fail to solve problems for the users they care about, that would not be a price worth paying. While I was initially sad that the collab did not come to a successful conclusion, I took solace in the fact that both Ethereum and Base are now free to innovate on AA to the maximal extent in accordance with their own visions, unshackled from the need to accommodate the other side. If they execute well, and if the wallet community can bridge over the fragmentation, we may well end up with the best possible UX for the end users. So where does that leave us -- the broader Ethereum community including Ethlabs -- if we want to continue pushing for a consistent UX across EVM chains? I see two paths forward: - We can establish a coordination mechanism that encompasses more stakeholders than ACD itself (where only L1 client devs have voting powers), to govern shared L1<>L2 resources such as the EVM. That way, L2s can participate in shaping the EVM, as opposed to having to accept whatever the ACD decides, or being forced to fork if they don't like the decision (such as in this case with Base). - We can accept that fragmentation of the EVM and wallet UX across L1 and L2s is inevitable due to their conflicting needs, and dedicate our resources to building wallets and applications that can abstract over the differences. Indeed, the collab was an exercise in the first path -- we invited Base, Arbitrum, and other stakeholders to directly influence how native AA shapes up for the L1. While it ultimately failed in this case, I feel a better outcome could've been achieved if we had established a dialog between both sides way earlier, as opposed to well after L1 core devs had rallied around Frames. On the other hand, I also learned from this exercise that some differences are unavoidable, and indeed it would be counterproductive to overly pursue interoperability at the cost of differentiation. In other words, we sometimes just gotta let the chains cook. For that reason, I've also become more bullish about the second path -- building wallets and applications that can speak the native transaction types of each chain, and hide the complexity from users through UX abstractions. This puts a lot of onus on the wallet/application developers of course, but on the bright side, it's also an opportunity for wallets/applications to stand out and differentiate, by competing to provide great UX across chains despite the underlying fragmentation. Ethereum is the art of staying together while remaining different. We must accept that chains will succeed by innovating, and innovations will naturally result in differences. On the other hand, we must never give up on dialogue when we can achieve interoperability without compromising core product goals. As Ethereum and crypto grow to eat the world, the push and pull between innovation and collaboration will only intensify, and it's up to all of us -- builders across L1 and L2s, applications and wallets -- to determine whether diverse innovations will split Ethereum apart, or make it thrive as one.