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Ethereum Foundation officially announces new leadership
The Ethereum Foundation has announced a new leadership structure consisting of two co-directors of the Foundation, Hsiao-Wei Wang — a core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, and Tomasz Stańczak, the CEO of Nethermind — one of the largest execution clients on Ethereum.
According to the March 1 announcement, Wang has seven years of experience as a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, and Stańczak has proven leadership in scaling an organization from an early-stage project to a global company.
Wang and Stańczak will assume their roles as co-directors of the Foundation on March 17. The Ethereum Foundation added:
"Over the next few years, the Ethereum ecosystem needs to navigate the challenging transition from being an early-stage project serving a small number of enthusiasts to being a robust, permissionless, censorship-resistant base layer of the global finance and software stack."
These new leadership changes come at a challenging time for the Ethereum ecosystem as Ether prices struggle to reclaim previous highs, fears that the network's layer-2 scaling solutions are cannibalizing Ethereum, and competition from new, high-throughput chains all erode investor confidence. Read More
SEC’s Crypto Task Force to host roundtable on crypto security status
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force is set to host a roundtable later this month on the “security status” of digital assets.
It comes the same day the agency announced the staffing lineup for the task force, which taps a former big law firm crypto lawyer along with longstanding SEC staff.
The SEC said in a March 3 press release that it will host a series of roundtables at its Washington, DC head office, dubbed the “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity.”
The first roundtable will kick off on March 21 with a discussion titled “How We Got Here and How We Get Out — Defining Security Status.”
“I am looking forward to drawing on the expertise of the public in developing a workable regulatory framework for crypto,” said Crypto Task Force lead Commissioner Hester Peirce.
The SEC’s acting chair, Mark Uyeda, launched the Crypto Task Force in late January to develop a crypto framework for the agency. One of President Donald Trump’s promises was to alleviate regulatory enforcement of the crypto industry. Read More
Coinbase, Gemini CEO throws support behind Bitcoin-only US crypto reserve
The CEOs behind crypto exchanges Coinbase and Gemini argue that Bitcoin may be the only cryptocurrency that meets the criteria for being a US reserve asset.
“Only one digital asset in the world right now meets the bar and that digital asset is Bitcoin,” Gemini’s Tyler Winklevoss said in a March 3 X post after US President Donald Trump announced plans to establish a Crypto Strategic Reserve.
Trump said the Crypto Strategic Reserve would include Solana, Cardano and XRP in addition to Bitcoin and Ether.
Winklevoss said while he has nothing against many of these coins, he doesn’t believe they’re suitable to be a US reserve asset.
“Many of these assets are listed for trading on Gemini and meet our rigorous listing policy criteria, but with respect to a Strategic Reserve it is another standard. An asset needs to be hard money that is a proven store of value like gold.”
Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong agreed, stating, “Just Bitcoin would probably be the best option,” pointing to it being the simplest cryptocurrency and a clear successor to gold.
If the US opts for more variety, Armstrong pitched adopting a market cap-weighted index of cryptocurrencies to remove potential bias. Read More
The Future of Finance – How Blockchain Technology Is Revolutionizing the Industry
In recent years, the financial landscape has undergone a profound transformation, largely driven by technological advancements.
Among these, blockchain technology has emerged as one of the most disruptive forces in the industry.
From DeFi (decentralized finance) to digital currencies like Bitcoin, blockchain is reshaping how we perceive and interact with money, investments and financial systems.
Understanding blockchain – A technological marvel:
At its core, blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger that records transactions across multiple computers in a secure and transparent manner.
Unlike traditional systems, where intermediaries like banks play a key role in processing and verifying transactions, blockchain allows peer-to-peer exchanges, ensuring that transactions are faster, more secure, and less costly.
The technology offers multiple benefits, including greater transparency, reduced fraud and enhanced security.
Its decentralized nature means that it is not controlled by any single authority, giving individuals more control over their financial activities.
As a result, blockchain is increasingly seen as a viable alternative to traditional banking systems and financial institutions. Read More
Public Keys: Coinbase Wins, Marathon Prints as Bitcoin Enters Choppy Waters
Analysts who follow Marathon should be singing the company’s praises, right? Well, that’s not exactly been the case.
Public Keys is a new weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key of publicly traded crypto companies. That term can be quite broad. It includes crypto exchange Coinbase, Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-amassing Strategy, Jack Dorsey’s crypto payments processor Block, Inc., and the many publicly traded crypto mining companies.
This week’s edition focuses on Bitcoin miner Marathon’s big win in Q4 and why it doesn’t seem to be convincing analysts to upgrade their ratings. Also: Crypto exchange Coinbase has finally seen its SEC lawsuit dismissed, miner Hut 8 will report its full-year earnings on Monday, and its competitor Bitfarms got the nod to complete its merger with Stronghold. Read More
A New Crypto Category Has Emerged. What Impact Will it Have…Will It Evolve Into A Significant Narrative?
US-based cryptocurrency initiatives have historically been reticent about their origins. However, during Gary Gensler's tenure, they became vulnerable to aggressive scrutiny from the SEC, and numerous projects found themselves in the regulatory crossfire. Being a US-based project has often been a liability rather than a benefit in recent years.
The cryptocurrency industry has been electrified by the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election, with Donald J. Trump's victory sparking widespread anticipation. The regulatory shifts expected under Trump's leadership are poised to grant the crypto sector unprecedented freedom in the United States.
A new cryptocurrency category has surfaced amid this enthusiasm: "Made in the USA." This category includes cryptocurrencies that are closely linked to the United States, whether through headquarters located in the US or ties to notable American personalities. With Trump backing crypto, this category could see substantial growth, likely surpassing many others.
This has the potential to evolve into a significant narrative; thus, this article explicitly addresses cryptocurrencies based in the United States, the reasons this narrative could gain prominence, and the cryptocurrencies that may benefit from a Trump administration. To commemorate President Trump's inauguration, a newly established cryptocurrency category titled 'Made in USA' has been incorporated into price tracking platforms, including CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. Read More
Our current data infrastructure threatens DeFi’s future
The future of DeFi is at risk as outdated data infrastructure struggles to keep pace with high-performance blockchains. Without a fundamental overhaul, innovation and adoption will falter.
Opinion by: Maxim Legg, founder and CEO of Pangea
The blockchain industry faces a critical infrastructure challenge. While we celebrate theoretical transaction speeds and tout decentralization, current RPC-based systems and traditional indexing approaches introduce significant latencies. If a 20-second load time would be unacceptable for a Web2 app, why are we settling for it in Web3?
With 53% of users abandoning websites after just three seconds of load time, our industry’s acceptance of these delays is an existential threat to adoption.
Slow transactions are not merely a user experience problem. High-performance chains like Aptos are capable of thousands of transactions per second. Yet, we are trying to access their data through “Frankenstein Indexers” — systems cobbled together from tools like Postgres and Kafka that were never designed for blockchain’s unique demands. Read More
Crypto Twitter Balks at Trump's Proposal to Include Altcoins in US Bitcoin Reserve
Trump's plan to dilute the Bitcoin reserve with other cryptos has triggered an industry divide between purists and pragmatists.
President Trump's plan to include altcoins in a strategic crypto reserve has split the crypto community, with some perplexed by the proposed addition of a number of high-profile tokens.
Revealed Sunday on Truth Social, the proposed crypto plan would create a strategic reserve that seeks to include XRP, Solana, Cardano, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.
President Donald Trump’s announcement triggered significant upswings across the crypto market after a broader dip that followed Bybit’s $1.4 billion theft late last month.
Crypto proponents were quick to voice their disapproval, arguing for a Bitcoin-only approach rather than incorporating what some term as "altcoins" or worse, "shitcoins." Read More
Tokenization can transform real estate investing — Polygon CEO
Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization can completely overhaul the real estate investment sector, which is highly illiquid, filled with intermediaries, and high transaction costs, according to Polygon CEO Mark Boiron.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, the CEO said that tokenization of properties could remove unnecessary intermediaries, thereby lowering transaction costs.
The CEO added that fractional ownership and trading tokenized real estate on the secondary markets would open up liquidity and increase the velocity of money. Boiron told Cointelegraph:
"The thing you really want is the ability to eliminate the illiquidity discount on real estate. All real estate is illiquid and therefore it's discounted to some degree. It can be more valuable if it's liquid."
Lumia Towers, an ongoing $220 million commercial real estate development in Istanbul, Turkey, featuring two skyscrapers with 300 mixed-use commercial and residential units, used Polygon's technology to tokenize the project.
Boiron said that the future of real estate is onchain. However, regulators must be comfortable with blockchain technology and public permissionless systems before tokenized real estate becomes the de facto standard. Read More
President Trump says crypto reserve to include BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, ADA
The president’s language surrounding a Bitcoin strategic reserve has shifted dramatically since his Bitcoin 2024 keynote address.
United States President Donald Trump recently announced that the President's Working Group on Digital Assets has been directed to include XRP, Solana, and Cardano’s ADA in the crypto strategic reserve.
The president later added Bitcoin and Ether to the list of cryptocurrencies to be included in the reserve in an appended post, stating that they would be at the “heart of the reserve.”
Trump previously promised to establish a “strategic national Bitcoin stockpile” at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Trump told the audience during his keynote speech:
“it will be the policy of my administration — the United States of America — to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the government currently holds or acquires into the future. We will keep a hundred percent.”
“I hope you do well, at least. This will serve, in effect, as the core of the strategic national Bitcoin stockpile,” the president continued.
The US president’s language on a Bitcoin strategic stockpile has shifted following his Jan. 23 executive order directing the group to establish a "digital asset stockpile,” which angered Bitcoin maximalists. Read More
Ethereum researcher pitches solution to fix centralization woes, eliminate MEV
An Ethereum researcher has pitched a new block proposal solution that aims to democratize Ethereum’s currently centralized block-building process by implementing a “shared random algorithm.”
The “Decentralized Random Block Proposal” would leverage Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) to eliminate Maximal Extractable Value at the block level, fully democratize block proposing and possibly accelerate propagation — the process by which transactions are broadcast to network validators — pseudonymous researcher Malik672 said in a March 1 post.
Malik672 said while Ethereum’s proof-of-stake model and the proposer-builder separation feature have migrated maximal extractable value concentration to some extent, it has resulted in builders and relays becoming more centralized.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter recently pointed out that two Ethereum block builders — Beaverbuild and Titan Builder — had built 88.7% of all Ethereum blocks in the first two weeks of October.
That figure has since been reduced to around 80%, according to Malik672, which is still far more centralized than what the Ethereum community would like.
“This system flips that: block-building spreads to thousands of clients globally, fully democratizing the process. No single entity dominates — unlike PBS’s builder pool or a centralized mixer — and BFT mitigates mempool variance, ensuring robustness.”
MEV — the value extracted by block proposers by reordering or censoring transactions — has resulted in a range of profit-driven manipulation strategies, such as arbitrage and front-running, which have come at the cost of ordinary network users.
“This undermines Ethereum’s decentralized ethos,” Malik672 said. Read More
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
Featured Image Source: Pixabay
