Network news
ETHEREUM FACES A KEY MOMENT WITH QUANTUM, AI CHANGES AHEAD: The first few months of 2026 have forced the Ethereum community into a kind of introspection – one that goes beyond price, beyond technical upgrades, and focuses on what the network is actually trying to be. Even before this year, there was a sense among builders and executives that Ethereum was on the cusp of a new phase of growth – this time driven not by crypto-native users, but by institutions and technology. Neobanks would, as some argued, quietly get millions on board by abstracting away the complexity of wallets and gas costs. Ethereum would not need to gain users directly in this context. It would sit underneath the interface and power a new financial stack that, at first glance, looked nothing like crypto. It was a continuation of a long-running thesis: that Ethereum’s success would come from invisibility. That vision has been shaped in part by years of previous upgrades aimed at improving the user experience and lowering costs. Changes such as ‘proto-dankharding’, introduced in the Dencun upgrade, have significantly reduced costs for layer 2 networks by increasing data downloads for transactions, while continued improvements to the base layer have made transactions more efficient. While the price of the network’s airwaves ($ETH) token has been determined by market forces, these upgrades have collectively helped Ethereum move 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 sharp reality check for the broader ecosystem: “You’re not scaling Ethereum.” The comment thwarted what had until then been a largely celebratory conversation about roll-ups. These types of networks, also called Layer-2 (L2) networks, process transactions outside of Ethereum and then bundle them back into the main chain to make them faster and cheaper. Layer 2 networks have exploded in recent years, transaction costs have fallen and activity has spread – but the deeper question was whether this all came down to coherent scaling. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
SOLANA FOUNDATION PROVIDES DEVELOPER PLATFORM FOR INSTITUTIONS: The Solana Foundation is launching a new developer platform that aims to make 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 allows enterprises to create and scale financial applications on Solana without deep crypto infrastructure expertise. The SDP will also integrate AI tools such as Claude Code from Anthropic and Codex from OpenAI. The platform bundles services from more than two dozen infrastructure providers – including custody, compliance, wallets and payments – into a single interface, streamlining the traditionally fragmented process for institutions entering this space. At launch, SDP will include two live modules. The issuance module allows companies to create tokenized deposits, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, while the payments 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 companies underlines the growing institutional interest in blockchain-based settlement. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
BALANCER LABS TO CLOSE: The company that built the decentralized finance (DeFi) powerhouse Balancer is closing. Balancer co-founder Fernando Martinelli has announced that Balancer Labs, the business entity that incubated and funded the decentralized exchange protocol, will close. 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 project’s third known security breach and the one that created the legal exposure Martinelli cited as the reason for shutting down BLabs. “BLabs as a corporate entity has become a burden rather than an asset to the future of the protocol and is simply not sustainable as it is without any source of revenue,” Martinelli wrote in a post on a board forum. Martinelli added that he was “seriously considering” shutting everything down completely. But he did not call for a complete phase-out, because the protocol still generates revenue. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
BITCOIN MINING CONCENTRATION TRIGGERS MINOR ‘REORG’: The problem of Bitcoin mining concentration just appeared on the blockchain itself, causing a minor ‘reorg’. At the center of the story is Foundry USA, the largest bitcoin mining pool, which represents a group of miners who combine their computing power to verify transactions, mine blocks and distribute the rewards in BTC. On the blockchain there are many miners, and sometimes two or more miners find a block almost at the same time. When that happens, the network temporarily has two competing versions of the blockchain. Ultimately, the network reorganizes itself back into a single chain, depending on which version grows faster. This process is called a blockchain reorganization or “reorg.” That’s what happened earlier this week: Foundry and AntPool both mined blocks at about the same time, causing a chain split. Foundry then produced several consecutive blocks, moving slightly faster than its competitors, becoming the chain that followed the network. The result: the blockchain was reorganized to the Foundry version, and the blocks mined by AntPool and ViaBTC were orphaned or effectively erased from the ledger. Those miners earned nothing for the work they did. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
In other news
- The New York Stock Exchange (ICE) is working with tokenization specialist Securitize to help design the infrastructure behind trading in tokenized securities. Securitize aims to go public this year through a SPAC deal with Cantor Equitize Partners (CEPT). CEPT shares are up 6% premarket. ICE stock is flat. The two companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding to build NYSE’s planned Digital Trading Platform. Securitize will serve as a design partner, focusing on how transfer agents – the entities that track ownership and handle corporate actions – operate 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 companies eligible to launch tokenized versions of stocks and ETFs on the platform, subject to regulatory approval. The company’s broker-dealer arm would also be able to participate in the trading, giving it a foothold in both issuance and market activity. The move comes as traditional stock exchange giants such as NYSE and Nasdaq are doubling down on tokenization efforts to bring blockchain rails to stock trading. — Kristian Sandor Read more.
- BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink used his annual letter to shareholders to argue that digital assets and tokenization could help modernize the financial system, even as he warned that the U.S. economic model is leaving too many people behind. In the letter, Fink said the current system has given most of its profits to people who already own assets, while leaving many workers locked out of the market growth. He linked that imbalance to a broader problem in the US, where rising inequality, high government debt and weak participation in capital markets are putting pressure on the old financing model. “Capitalism works – just not for enough people,” Fink wrote. His proposed solution focused on tokenization and digital distribution as tools to expand access to investments and make markets function better. Tokenization, Fink said, could “update the plumbing of the financial system” by making it easier to issue, trade and access investments. The idea is simple: Recording asset ownership in digital ledgers can make moving a fund share, bond or other security faster and cheaper. In practice, this would allow a regulated digital wallet to hold not only payments, but also tokenized bonds, ETFs and fractional stakes in assets such as infrastructure or private credit. — Helene Braun Read more.
Regulations and policies
- Crypto industry insiders got their first look at the revised market structure bill in the Senate, and the initial impression was that the language on allowable stablecoin proceeds was 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 yield payments for simply holding a stablecoin. It would also limit any approach that makes the program equivalent to a bank deposit, and it places further restrictions on other potentially permitted activities, the person said, adding that the mechanisms for determining activity-based stablecoin rewards remain uncertain. The crypto industry got its first taste of the revised section of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act earlier this week during a closed-door review on Capitol Hill in Washington, an effort to clear a roadblock to a hearing in the Senate Banking Committee. Bankers had insisted that rewards for stablecoins are nothing like interest-bearing bank deposits, as they argued the competing product could stifle the sector and stifle lending. So the compromise will allow rewards 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 consultation on applying a financial transaction tax, 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 lead to conflict with Congress during an election year. The postponed consultation focused on a draft decree that could classify some crypto transactions as currency transactions. — Francisco Rodrigues Read more.
Calendar
- March 24-26, 2026: Digital Asset Summit, New York City
- March 30 – April 2, 2026: EthCC, Cannes
- April 15-16, 2026: Paris Blockchain Week, Paris
- May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami
- September 29 – October 1, 2026: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
- October 7-8, 2026: Token2049, Singapore
- November 3-6, 2026: Devcon, Mumbai
- November 15-17, 2026: Solana Breakpoint, London