Network news
ETHEREUM SURFACES KEY MOMENT WITH QUANTUM, AI CHANGES AHEAD: The first few months of 2026 have forced the Ethereum community into an introspection of sorts — one that goes beyond price, beyond technical upgrades, and into the question of what the network is really trying to be. Even before this year, there has been a sense among developers and leaders that Ethereum was on the verge of another growth phase – this time driven not by crypto-native users, but by institutions and technology. Neobanks, some argued, would onboard millions by abstracting the complexity of wallets and gas fees. Ethereum, in this framing, does not need to win users directly. It would sit beneath the interface and power a new financial stack that, on the surface, looked nothing like crypto. It was a continuation of a long-standing thesis: that Ethereum’s success would come from invisibility. This vision is shaped in part by years of previous upgrades aimed at improving the user experience and reducing costs. Changes such as “proto-danksharding”, introduced in the Dencun upgrade, significantly lowered fees for layer 2 networks by increasing data transfers for transactions, while ongoing improvements to the base layer have made transactions more efficient. While the price of the network’s ether token (ETH) has been determined by market forces, these upgrades have collectively helped move Ethereum closer to a model where users interact with applications without having to understand the underlying infrastructure. But that narrative began to change a few weeks into the year when Vitalik Buterin delivered a stark reality check to the wider ecosystem: “You don’t scale Ethereum.” The comment cut through what up until then had been a largely celebratory conversation about rollups. These types of networks, also known as layer-2 (L2) networks, process transactions from Ethereum and then aggregate them back to the main chain to make it faster and cheaper. Layer-2 networks have exploded over the past few years, transaction fees have fallen and activity has spread – but the deeper question was whether any of this equated to coherent scaling. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
SOLANA FOUNDATION DEVELOPS DEVELOPER PLATFORM FOR INSTITUTIONS: The Solana Foundation is launching a new developer platform aimed at making it easier for financial institutions to build blockchain-based products with early adopters including Mastercard, Western Union and Worldpay. The Solana Developer Platform (SDP), currently available for developers to test, is a toolkit that enables businesses to build and scale financial applications on Solana without deep crypto infrastructure expertise. SDP will also integrate AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. The platform brings together services from more than 20 infrastructure providers – spanning custody, compliance, wallets and payments – into a single interface, streamlining what has traditionally been a fragmented process for institutions entering the space. At launch, SDP includes two live modules. The issuance module enables companies to create tokenized deposits, stablecoins and real-world tokenized assets, while the payment module supports fiat and stablecoin flows, including on- and off-ramps and onchain transactions. A trading module is expected later in 2026. The involvement of traditional payment firms underlines the growing institutional interest in blockchain-based settlement. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
BALANCE LABS TO SHUTDOWN: The company that built decentralized finance (DeFi) powerhouse Balancer is shutting down. Balancer co-founder Fernando Martinelli announced that Balancer Labs, the corporate entity that incubated and funded the decentralized exchange protocol, will shut down. The decision comes about five months after a v2 exploit in November 2025 that drained about $110 million in digital assets, as CoinDesk first reported, including osETH, WETH and wstETH, the third known security breach for the project and the one that created the legal exposure Martinelli cited as the reason for shutting down BLabs. “BLabs as a company has become a liability rather than an asset for the future of the protocol and is just not sustainable as it is without any revenue streams,” Martinelli wrote in a post on a governance forum. Martinelli added that he was “seriously considering” shutting everything down completely. But he stopped short of calling for a full shutdown because the protocol still generates revenue. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
BITCOIN MINING CONCENTRATION TRIGGERS SMALL ‘REORG’: Bitcoin’s mining concentration problem just surfaced on the blockchain itself, triggering a small “reorg”. At the center of the story is Foundry USA, the largest bitcoin mining pool, representing a group of miners who combine their computing power to verify transactions, mine blocks and split the rewards in BTC. On the blockchain, there are many miners, and sometimes two or more find a block at almost the same time. When that happens, the network temporarily has two competing versions of the blockchain. Eventually, the network reorganizes back into a single chain, depending on which version grows faster. This process is called a blockchain reorganization or “reorg”. This is what happened earlier this week: Foundry and AntPool both mined blocks at roughly the same time, causing a chain split. Foundry then produced several consecutive blocks that moved slightly faster than its competitors and became the chain the network followed. The result: the blockchain reorganized into Foundry’s version, and the blocks mined by AntPool and ViaBTC were orphaned or effectively deleted from the ledger. These miners earned nothing for the work they had done. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
In other news
- The New York Stock Exchange (ICE) is teaming up with tokenization specialist Securitize to help design the infrastructure behind tokenized securities trading. Securitize aims to go public this year via a SPAC deal with Cantor Equitize Partners (CEPT). CEPT shares are up 6% pre-market. ICE shares are flat. The two firms signed a memorandum of understanding to build the NYSE’s planned digital trading platform. Securitize will act as a design partner, focusing on how transfer agents – the entities that track ownership and handle corporate transactions – work when securities are issued and settled on blockchain rails. Securitize, backed by major asset managers such as BlackRock and Ark Invest and registered with the SEC as a transfer agent, is expected to be among the first firms eligible to mint tokenized versions of stocks and ETFs on the platform, subject to regulatory approvals. The firm’s broker-dealer arm could also participate in trading, giving it a foothold across both issuance and market activity. The move comes as traditional stock exchanges such as the NYSE and Nasdaq are doubling down on tokenization efforts to bring blockchain rails into stock trading. — Christian Sandor Read more.
- BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink used his annual letter to shareholders to argue that digital assets and tokenization could help update the financial system, even as he warned that the US economic model is leaving too many people behind. In the letter, Fink said the current system has delivered most of its gains to people who already own assets, while many workers have been locked out of market growth. He linked this imbalance to a broader problem in the United States, where rising inequality, high national debt and weak participation in the capital markets are putting pressure on the old financial model. “Capitalism works—just not for enough people,” Fink wrote. His proposed solution centered on tokenization and digital distribution as tools to expand access to investing and make markets run better. Tokenization, Fink said, could “update the plumbing of the financial system” by making investments easier to issue, trade and access. The idea is simple: If ownership of assets is recorded on digital ledgers, it can become faster and cheaper to move a fund share, bond or other security. In practice, it would enable a regulated digital wallet to accommodate not only payments, but also tokenized bonds, ETFs and fractional interests in assets such as infrastructure or private credit. — Helen Braun Read more.
Legislation and policy
- Crypto industry insiders got their first look at the revised market structure bill in the Senate, and the opening impression was that the language on the stablecoin dividend allowed was far too narrow and unclear, according to a person familiar with the current draft. The new language, announced Friday by Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Thom Tillis, would ban dividend payments for simply holding a stablecoin. It would also limit any approach that makes the program equivalent to a bank deposit, and it imposes additional restrictions on other potentially permitted activities, the person said, adding that the mechanics of determining activity-based stablecoin rewards remain uncertain. The crypto industry got its first look at the revised section of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act earlier this week during a closed-door review on Capitol Hill in Washington, an attempt to clear a roadblock to getting a Senate Banking Committee hearing. Bankers had insisted that stablecoin rewards are not similar to interest-bearing bank deposits because they argued that the competing product could hamper the industry and stifle lending. So the compromise will allow reward programs for users’ stablecoin activities, but not balances. — Jesse Hamilton Read more.
- Brazil’s new finance minister, Dario Durigan, is expected to postpone a public hearing on applying a tax on financial operations, known locally as Imposto sobre Operações Financeiras (IOF), to some cryptocurrency transactions, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. Durigan took office on March 20 after Fernando Haddad resigned to run for governor of São Paulo. Reuters said the new minister wants to focus on microeconomic measures and avoid proposals that could spark conflict with Congress during an election year. The postponed hearing centered on a draft decree that could classify some crypto transactions as currency transactions. — Francisco Rodrigues Read more.
Calendar
- 24.-26. March 2026: Digital Asset Summit, New York City
- March 30-Apr. 2, 2026: EthCC, Cannes
- 15-16 Apr. 2026: Paris Blockchain Week, Paris
- 5.-7. May 2026: Consensus, Miami
- September 29-1. October 2026: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
- 7.-8. October 2026: Token2049, Singapore
- 3.-6. November 2026: Devcon, Mumbai
- 15.-17. November 2026: Solana Breakpoint, London
