Network news
ETHEREUM FACES A KEY MOMENT WITH QUANTUM, CHANGES IN AI ARE ADVANCED: 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 actually trying to be. Even before this year, builders and executives had a sense that Ethereum was on the verge of another phase of growth, this time driven not by crypto-native users but by institutions and technology. Neobanks, as some argued, would quietly onboard millions of people by abstracting the complexity of wallets and gas fees. Ethereum, in this framework, would not need to gain users directly. It would sit beneath the interface, powering a new financial stack that, on the surface, looked nothing like cryptocurrencies. It was a continuation of a long-standing thesis: that Ethereum’s success would come from invisibility. That vision has been shaped in part by years of previous updates aimed at improving the user experience and reducing costs. Changes such as “proto-danksharding,” introduced in the Dencun update, significantly reduced fees for Layer 2 networks by increasing data downloads for transactions, while ongoing improvements to the base layer have made transactions more efficient. While the price of the network’s ether (ETH) token has been determined by market forces, these updates have together helped move Ethereum closer to a model where users interact with applications without needing to understand the underlying infrastructure. But that narrative began to change a few weeks into the year, when Vitalik Buterin gave a clear reality check to the broader ecosystem: “You’re not scaling Ethereum.” The comment interrupted what, until then, had been a largely celebratory conversation about rollups. These types of networks, also known as Layer 2 (L2) networks, process transactions outside of Ethereum and then aggregate them back into the main chain to make them faster and cheaper. Layer 2 networks have exploded in recent years, transaction fees have dropped and activity has spread, but the deeper question was whether any of this amounted to coherent scaling. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
SOLANA FOUNDATION LAUNCHES DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM FOR INSTITUTIONS: The Solana Foundation is launching a new development platform aimed at making it easier for financial institutions to create blockchain-based products, and its first users include Mastercard, Western Union and Worldpay. The Solana Developer Platform (SDP), currently available for developers to try, is a set of tools that allows businesses to build and scale financial applications on Solana without deep crypto infrastructure expertise. The SDP will also integrate artificial intelligence tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. The platform bundles 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 allows businesses to create tokenized deposits, stablecoins, and real-world tokenized assets, while the payments module supports fiat and stablecoin flows, including on- and off-ramps and on-chain transactions. A commercial module is expected later in 2026. The participation of traditional payments companies underlines the growing institutional interest in blockchain-based settlement. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
BALANCER LABORATORIES TO CLOSE: The company that built decentralized finance (DeFi) powerhouse Balancer is closing. Balancer co-founder Fernando Martinelli announced that Balancer Labs, the corporate entity that incubated and funded the decentralized exchange protocol, will close. The decision comes roughly five months after a v2 exploit in November 2025 that drained approximately $110 million in digital assets, as first reported by CoinDesk, including osETH, WETH, and wstETH, the third known security breach for the project and the one that created the legal exposure that Martinelli cited as the reason for shutting down BLabs. “BLabs, as a corporate entity, has become a liability 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 governance forum post. Martinelli added that he “seriously considered” closing everything completely. But he stopped short of asking for a full liquidation because the protocol still generates income. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
CONCENTRATION OF BITCOIN MINING TRIGGERS A SMALL ‘REORG’: The Bitcoin mining concentration issue has just appeared on the blockchain itself, prompting a small “reorganization.” 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 rewards in BTC. In the blockchain, there are many miners and sometimes two or more find a block almost at the same time. When that happens, the network temporarily has two competing versions of the blockchain. Finally, the network is reorganized back into a single chain, depending on which version grows the fastest. This process is called blockchain reorganization or “reorganization.” That’s what happened earlier this week: Foundry and AntPool mined blocks around the same time, causing a chain split. Foundry then produced several consecutive blocks, moving slightly faster than its competitors, and became the chain followed by the network. The result: the blockchain was reorganized to the Foundry version, and the blocks mined by AntPool and ViaBTC were either orphaned or effectively deleted from the ledger. Those miners earned nothing for the work they had done. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
In other news
- The New York Stock Exchange (ICE) is partnering with tokenization specialist Securitize to help design the infrastructure behind trading tokenized securities. Securitize aims to go public this year through a SPAC deal with Cantor Equitize Partners (CEPT). CEPT shares rose 6% premarket. ICE shares remain stable. The two companies 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 actions) operate when securities are issued and settled on blockchain rails. Securitize, backed by large 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 mint tokenized versions of stocks and ETFs on the platform, subject to regulatory approvals. The company’s brokerage arm could also participate in the operations, giving it a foothold in both issuance and market activity. The move comes as traditional exchange giants like NYSE and Nasdaq are redoubling their tokenization efforts to bring blockchain rails to stock trading. — Kristzian Sandor Read more.
- BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink used his annual letter to shareholders to argue that digital assets and tokenization could help upgrade the financial system, even as he warned that the American 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 many workers have been excluded from market growth. He linked that imbalance to a broader problem in the United States, where growing inequality, high public debt and weak participation in capital markets are putting pressure on the old model of finance. “Capitalism is working, but not for enough people,” Fink wrote. Their proposed solution focused on tokenization and digital distribution as tools to expand investment access and make markets work better. Tokenization, Fink said, could “upgrade the plumbing of the financial system” by making it easier to issue, trade and access investments. The idea is simple: If asset ownership is recorded on digital ledgers, moving a fund share, bond or other security could be faster and cheaper. In practice, that would allow a regulated digital wallet to hold not just payments, but also tokenized bonds, ETFs, and fractional interests in assets like infrastructure or private credit. — Helena Braun Read more.
Regulation and policy
- Cryptocurrency industry insiders first saw the revised market structure bill in the Senate, and the initial impression was that the language on the allowable yield of stablecoins was too limited and unclear, according to a person familiar with the current draft. The new language, announced Friday by Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Thom Tillis, would prohibit performance payments simply for owning a stablecoin. It would also restrict any approach that makes the program equivalent to a bank deposit, and imposes additional limits on other potentially permitted activities, the person said, adding that the mechanics for 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 hurdle to getting a hearing in the Senate Banking Committee. Bankers had insisted that stablecoin rewards were nothing like interest-bearing bank deposits, because they argued the competing product could cripple the industry and strangle lending. Therefore, the compromise will allow reward programs for users’ stablecoin activities, but not for balances. — jesse hamilton Read more.
- Brazil’s new Finance Minister Dario Durigan is expected to delay a public consultation on applying a financial operations 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 trigger a conflict with Congress during an election year. The postponed consultation focused on a draft decree that could classify some crypto transactions as currency exchange operations. — francisco rodrigues Read more.
Calendar
- March 24-26, 2026: Digital Asset Summit, New York City
- From March 30 to April 30. 2, 2026: EthCC, Cannes
- April 15-16, 2026: Paris Blockchain Week, Paris
- May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami
- September 29 to 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
