Author: Olivia Martinez

The EF’s Grants Program launched in 2018 and has evolved over time to become the Ecosystem Support Program (ESP), providing grants and support to builders that help the Ethereum ecosystem thrive. Our mission is to enable work that strengthens Ethereum’s foundations and empowers future builders, in domains such as developer tooling, research, community building, infrastructure, and open standards. In 2024 alone, ESP awarded close to $3M in funding to 105 projects and initiatives that came through our open grants program webforms. These grants, which are one part of ESP’s larger portfolio, supported a diverse range of work, such as Commit-Boost…

A few months ago, we announced a renewed focus of Protocol on three strategic initiatives: Scale L1, Scale blobs, Improve UX. Following previous updates on Scale L1 and Scale blobs, this note relates to our “Improve UX” track, and its mission: Seamless, secure and permissionless experience across the Ethereum ecosystem, for individuals and institutions. We see interoperability, and related projects presented in this note, as the highest leverage opportunity within the broader UX domain over the next 6-12 months, in our position as a public, core Ethereum R&D group. The near-term strategy focuses on areas we believe will continue to…

As previously announced, the Holešky testnet has reached its planned end-of-life date and will be sunset shortly. The vast majority of remaining validator nodes will be shut down 2 weeks after the Fusaka upgrade has finalized on Holešky. After this, Holešky will no longer be supported by client, testing or infrastructure teams. Following the launch of the Hoodi testnet in March 2025, infrastructure providers and staking operators have had the opportunity to migrate their testing operations. Background Holešky was launched in 2023 as Ethereum’s largest public testnet, designed specifically for testing staking infrastructure and validator operations at scale. The network…

Today, we are excited to announce the start of the Fusaka audit contest, co-sponsored by Gnosis and Lido, hosted on Sherlock, and running for four weeks from September 15th. The goal is simple: maximize scrutiny of the Fusaka upgrade and surface vulnerabilities before they can impact the network. To raise the stakes, valid findings reported in the first week have a 2x multiplier applied to their points rewarded, and those in the second week have a 1.5x multiplier. To help security researchers, we’ve prepared a Fusaka auditor guide. We’re grateful to Gnosis for contributing 100,000 USD and Lido for contributing…

World’s Fairs have historically showcased the biggest innovations of their time like telephones, televisions, photography, and light bulbs. In this spirit, Ethereum gets its own World’s Fair this November in Buenos Aires. A week where the ecosystem doesn’t just talk about innovation, but showcases what’s being built now, and what’s next. We’re creating a space to see, touch, and experience the frontier of technology. A World’s Fair that showcases what Ethereum can do today. The eight districts of the Ethereum World’s Fair Just as Nikola Tesla’s electricity system lit up Chicago’s World’s Fair in 1893, when most people still used…

Fusaka follows this year’s Pectra upgrade, representing a major step forward in Ethereum’s scaling roadmap by introducing PeerDAS and key improvements that enhance blob throughput, L1 performance, and user experience. This post announces the testnet activation schedule for the first three testnets, beginning with Holesky at slot 5,283,840 (October 1, 2025, 08:48:00 UTC). See the activation table below for the complete Sepolia and Hoodi timeline. Fusaka also introduces Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks to safely scale blob throughput after PeerDAS activation. These are minimal, config-only upgrades that adjust the blob target/max and fee update fraction. The Fusaka testnet client releases…

Community & educationBluechip25Conference hosted in Vienna, Austria dedicated to crypto safety, learning and sharing best practices, and setting new benchmarks for trust and transparency.Community & educationBuildETHConference focused on Ethereum infrastructure, DeFi primitives and protocols, AI agents, and new financial rails for digital assets organized in San Francisco, USA.Community & educationDeFi Security SummitTechnical conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina diving into the education and technical advances in securing dapps on top of blockchain technology.Community & educationDestino DevconnectGrants round focused on supporting community-led events and initiatives that help bring Argentina and the broader Latin America region onchain.Community & educationdEVMatch 2025APU Blockchain & Cryptocurrency…

Devconnect Buenos Aires wrapped up as the largest Ethereum Foundation event yet, bringing together a global mix of developers, founders, creators, and curious newcomers. Key numbers from the week 14,000+ attendeesfrom 130+ countries45% from Argentina53% first-time EF event attendees1,000+ visas issued in collaboration with Argentina’s Dirección Nacional de Migraciones80+ application exhibitors40+ deep-dive events15 Community Hubs200 volunteers500+ community-run side events across the city 📸 Find the Devconnect photo gallery here.📋 Share your feedback with us and fill out the survey. 🎡 A World’s Fair for Ethereum with La Rural as the Schellingpoint For the first time, Devconnect introduced a World’s Fair-style…

Thanks to Arantxa Zapico, Benedikt Wagner, and Dmitry Khovratovich from the EF cryptography team for their contributions, and to Ladislaus, Kev, Alex, and Marius for the careful review and feedback. The zkEVM ecosystem has been sprinting for a year. And it worked! We crossed the finish line for real-time proving! Now comes the next phase: building something mainnet-grade. From speed to security In July, we published a north-star definition for realtime proving. Nine months later, the ecosystem crushed it: proving latency dropped from 16 minutes to 16 seconds, costs collapsed 45×, and zkVMs now prove 99% of all Ethereum blocks…

Fusaka shipped PeerDAS in addition to a myriad of minor features and Glamsterdam’s major features will include Block-level Access Lists and enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation. Now we begin outlining the subsequent upgrade: Hegotá. Timeline Jan 8th – Feb 4th: Headliner proposals (EthMag) Feb 5th – Feb 26th*: Headliner discussion & finalization (ACD calls) 30-day window to follow: Non-headliner EIP proposals (Hegota Meta EIP) *subject to change Headliner proposals Hegota’s major features (”headliners”) will be chosen first. These features, presented as EIPs, can be submitted on the Ethereum Magicians forum beginning January 8th, using a template that will be posted in the…