Network news
NEW SCALING PLANS FOR ETHEREUM: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a blog post on X outlining his latest vision for blockchain scaling, arguing that the network can increase capacity in the short term while laying the groundwork for a longer-term shift to advanced cryptography and data-heavy “blobs” that would change how Ethereum is validated. The post reflects Buterin’s renewed focus on scaling Ethereum’s base layer after several years in which much of the ecosystem’s scaling strategy centered on layer-2 rollups. The plan comes on the heels of the Ethereum Foundation releasing a ‘straw map’ aimed at making the network more efficient in the long term. In the short term, Buterin says Ethereum can certainly increase throughput by making blocks easier and faster to verify. Upcoming upgrades will allow the computers running Ethereum to go through different parts of a block simultaneously, instead of processing everything step by step. At the same time, changes to how blocks are built will let the network use more of each 12-second processing window instead of exiting early out of caution (known as ePBS, and will be implemented in the Glamsterdam upgrade). The result: Ethereum had to be able to fit more transactions into each block without increasing the risk of error or instability. Another key part of the plan involves rethinking how transaction fees — known as “gas” — are calculated. Buterin argues that not all activity on Ethereum puts the same strain on the network. There is a big difference between using computing power temporarily and permanently adding new data that any Ethereum computer or node must store forever. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
OKX COMES WITH AI AGENTS: OKX rolled out an AI-focused upgrade to OnchainOS, its developer platform, pitching it as infrastructure for autonomous crypto trading agents. The AI layer builds on well-known components such as wallet infrastructure, liquidity routing, and onchain data feeds, and combines them into a unified execution framework targeting AI agents operating across chains. Instead of manually hooking up price feeds, token approvals, gas estimation, and swap routing, developers can hook up an agent and issue a high-level instruction, such as swapping ETH for USDC below a certain price. OnchainOS handles the workflow behind the scenes, from monitoring markets to purchasing liquidity and confirming settlement. The intersection of crypto and AI has grown exponentially in the past 12 months—the blockchain AI market is expected to grow from $6 billion in 2024 to $50 billion in 2030—and traders are using the technology to their advantage. A recent example occurred when a group of retailers used AI to find “bugs” on platforms like Polymarket before instructing the AI to act on their behalf. — Sam Reynolds Read more.
NEAR FOUNDERS OF THE FUTURE USERS OF BLOCKCHAIN: For years, the crypto industry has been searching for its next breakout moment — something on the scale of the DeFi summer or the NFT boom. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI) has quietly become embedded in everyday life. Developers use ChatGPT as a co-pilot. Consumers rely on AI assistants to draft emails, plan trips and increasingly manage workflows. Crypto, by comparison, still feels infrastructural. Illia Polosukhin, a co-founder of NEAR, believes the divide is collapsing, but not in the way many expect. “The users of blockchain will be AI agents,” Polosukhin said in an interview. “AI is going to be on the front end and blockchain is going to be the back end.” His framing cuts to much of crypto’s recent experiments with AI, which have centered on speculative tokens, memecoins and agent-themed trading bots. Instead, Polosukhin argues that AI will become the primary interface layer for everything online, including crypto, wallet abstraction, explorers, and transaction hashing. “The goal is to make your AI hide all the blockchain,” he said. “The fact that we have [blockchain] explorers are actually a failure because we don’t abstract the technology.” In this view, blockchain isn’t going away, it’s receding. AI agents interact directly with protocols, make payments, manage assets, coordinate services, and even vote in governance systems. Meanwhile, humans interact with AI. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
BITCOIN’S LATEST GOVERNANCE CLASH: Bitcoin’s latest government clash escalated when the first block signal support for a temporary soft fork designed to limit arbitrary, non-monetary data in the blockchain’s transactions was produced by mining pool Ocean. The proposal, formally assigned to BIP-110 after evolving from earlier drafts, aims to reinstate strict limits on transaction output sizes and arbitrary data fields for about a year. The idea is to limit what advocates see as “spam” use of block space for non-financial data. They argue that uncontrolled data, including large inscriptions and so-called OP_RETURN payloads, threatens the native blockchain’s role as sound monetary infrastructure and burdens node operators. Society remains deeply divided. Prominent critics, including Blockstream CEO Adam Back, have warned that intervention at the consensus level could damage Bitcoin’s credibility and lead to preferential treatment of some transactions in violation of the principle of neutral transaction capacity. He also questioned the level of support for the proposal, which he said increased the risk of the blockchain splitting. — Jamie Crawley Read more.
In other news
- Kraken secured a “master account” from the Federal Reserve, giving its banking arm direct access to the Fed’s central payment systems and making it the first crypto firm to operate on a par with traditional financial institutions. The company said its Kraken Financial unit received approval for a “master account” from the Federal Reserve. The account provides direct access to Fedwire, a large interbank payment network that processes trillions in transfers every day. Until now, Kraken has relied on partner banks to send or receive US dollars. Direct access changes that flow as the company can now process payments itself, which can speed up payments for large merchants and institutional customers. Kraken Financial operates under a Wyoming charter designed for crypto-focused banks. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City supervised the application. However, the approval is limited. Kraken will not receive the full set of services available to traditional banks, as it will not earn interest on reserves or be able to tap into the Fed’s emergency loans. — Francisco Rodrigues Read more.
- Tether, the company behind the most popular stablecoin, USDT, invested $50 million in sleep technology startup Eight Sleep at a $1.5 billion valuation, according to a Wednesday press release and data from Crunchbase. With the funding, Eight Sleep plans to develop new AI health features using Tether’s QVAC architecture, a computing framework designed to process data at the device level instead of relying entirely on cloud systems. Eight Sleep builds sensor-equipped sleep systems that track biometrics such as heart rate and temperature throughout the night. Its flagship “Pod” product adjusts mattress temperature and generates sleep insights based on real-time physiological data. “We believe that advanced personal artificial intelligence is the perfect path to understanding and expanding human potential,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, in a statement. The investment is the latest example of Tether pushing beyond stablecoins and crypto infrastructure. The firm is best known for its $183 billion USDT stablecoin, which is popular as a savings and payment tool across emerging markets with limited access to US dollars. Tether reported more than $10 billion in net revenue by 2025 and has increasingly channeled those earnings into venture investments across energy, payments, artificial intelligence and health tech. — Christian Sandor Read more.
Legislation and policy
- US President Donald Trump said bankers are trying to undermine the Genius Act — the signature stablecoin legislation he signed into law last year — in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, and he called for Congress to pass crypto market structure legislation without interference. “The US needs to get the market structure done, ASAP. Americans should get more bang for their buck,” he said in the post. “The banks are hitting record profits and we will not allow them to undermine our powerful Crypto agenda that will end up going to China and other countries if we don’t get The Clarity Act done.” He warned banks against holding the Clarity Act hostage, saying the bill was necessary to keep the crypto industry in the United States. The market structure bill has been in limbo since the Senate Banking Committee indefinitely postponed a markup hearing in which lawmakers were set to debate and vote on amendments to the bill in January. There are a number of issues still holding up passage of the bill, but the most public battle has been between the banking and crypto sectors over whether third parties can offer returns on stablecoin deposits to customers.— Nikhilesh De Read more.
- A federal judge has dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Uniswap Labs, CEO Hayden Adams and several venture capital backers, ruling that they cannot be held liable for alleged “rug pull” tokens traded on the decentralized exchange’s protocol. In a ruling issued by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Katherine Polk Failla threw out the remaining state claims in Risley v. Universal Navigation Inc., the Brooklyn-based company that operates Uniswap. after previously dismissing the plaintiffs’ federal securities claims. The decision effectively ends the case at district court level. The ruling is one of the first to specifically address whether developers and investors behind a decentralized protocol can be held liable under existing securities and state laws for tokens created and traded by third parties. “Due to the decentralized nature of the protocol, the identities of Scam Token issuers are basically unknown and unknowable, leaving claimants with an identifiable harm but no identifiable defendant,” Failla wrote. “Undaunted, they are now suing the Uniswap Defendants and the VC Defendants in the hope that this court can overlook the fact that the current state of cryptocurrency regulation leaves them without recourse, at least with respect to the specific claims alleged in this case,” she added. — Olivier Acuna 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
- 29.-30. April 2026: Token2049, Dubai
- 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
