Ethereum’s roadmap moved forward this week as developers confirmed Glamsterdam’s Sepolia activation for October 6, narrowed Hegotá’s candidate EIPs and pushed the EIP-8363 issuance debate toward broader community consultation. Beyond protocol development, S&P Global agreed to acquire OpenZeppelin, Balancer proposed an orderly wind-down, India pushed further into asset tokenisation and a $7.73 million rsETH exploit highlighted smart-account security risks. Meanwhile, Ethereum ETFs gained while Bitcoin ETFs faced heavy outflows, on-chain options activity expanded and the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance launched a new initiative to make protocol developments easier for enterprises to understand.

Catch up on last week's edition here.

This Week at a Glance

A. Regulation

• Lagarde Reportedly Blocks Binance's EU Crypto License: European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde reportedly urged Greece to halt Binance’s attempt to obtain an EU-wide MiCA licence, bringing Binance’s regulatory history and concerns around stablecoins into the debate over its European expansion.
• India Moves Faster on Asset Tokenisation: India is moving from tokenisation pilots toward real financial infrastructure, with regulators and financial institutions exploring tokenised bonds, gold, land and other real-world assets.
• Do Banks Really Need Protection From Blockchain?: The debate around blockchain and traditional finance is increasingly shifting from disruption toward adoption, as JPMorgan, Citi, Swift and other major financial institutions build blockchain-based infrastructure.

B. Security

• $7.73M rsETH Lost in Ethereum Safe Exploit: An Ethereum Safe wallet lost approximately $7.73 million in rsETH after an authorised third-party module was exploited through a public multicall and attacker-controlled liquidity pool. Safe’s core multisig contracts were not directly compromised.
• Hackers Trick Revolut With Fake Italian Police Emails: Hackers reportedly used a genuine Italian government email account to obtain sensitive Revolut customer information, affecting roughly 680 users across Europe.
• Vitalik Buterin Says AI Could Strengthen Cybersecurity: Vitalik Buterin argued that increasingly capable AI could strengthen defensive cybersecurity by helping developers formally verify whether complex software satisfies clearly defined security properties.

C. Privacy

• Revolut Shares Customer Data After Fake Government Email: Revolut reportedly disclosed sensitive customer information after a fraudulent government request was mistaken for legitimate law-enforcement communication, exposing KYC and crypto-related records.
• Vitalik Buterin on Adversarial Governance & AI Safety: Vitalik Buterin connected AI safety with adversarial governance and mechanism design, arguing that increasingly powerful systems should be designed for environments where participants cannot always be assumed to cooperate honestly.

D. Global

• S&P Global to Acquire OpenZeppelin: S&P Global agreed to acquire OpenZeppelin, bringing one of Ethereum’s best-known smart-contract security companies into a major institutional ratings, data and risk-intelligence group.
• Bitcoin ETFs Lose $463M, Ethereum ETFs Gain $197M: U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $462.7 million in net outflows between September 8 and September 11, while Ethereum ETFs attracted approximately $196.9 million across the same four trading sessions.
• Derive.xyz Bets Big on On-Chain Options Trading: Derive’s options market has grown rapidly, with open interest moving from roughly $500 million toward $4 billion as liquidity and trader activity increase.
• CoinEx Shuts Down After Nine Years: CoinEx announced an orderly wind-down after nine years of operation, with spot trading scheduled to end on September 29 and withdrawals remaining available until December 22, 2026.
• Balancer Proposes Wind-Down With Treasury Payout for BAL Holders: Balancer CEO Marcus Hardt proposed winding down the existing organisation and returning treasury assets to BAL holders through token burns.

Ethereum Protocol

1. AllCoreDevs - Consensus #187

• Glamsterdam’s Sepolia fork was confirmed for October 6, while Hoodi is tentatively targeted for October 27 if Sepolia progresses smoothly.
• EIP-8015 moved to CFI for Hegotá, while EIP-8411, Fast Execution Payload Broadcast, advanced to PFI.
• EIP-8237, EIP-8341, EIP-8367, EIP-8321, EIP-8243, EIP-8146 and EIP-8375 moved to DFI for Hegotá.
• EIP-8363 received no inclusion decision. Alex Stokes will propose a process for broader community input before the issuance proposal returns to ACDC.

2. EIP Improvement Process #130

• Editors agreed to merge the Unicode Technical Standards Calls for Input, with the remaining PR to be force-merged after outstanding conflicts are resolved.
• The Add Associate EIP Editors CFI was approved for merge after completing its review deadline.
• Calls for Input will remain in the EIPIP repository, while contributing guidelines now clarify EIP numbering and require two editor approvals for active EIP PRs instead of force-merging them.

3. PQ Transaction Signatures #015

• daisugi.fyi:3000 was adopted as the permanent PQTS testnet, with STARK-based signature aggregation selected as its next major experiment.
• Developers plan to run STARK signature-aggregation experiments on the persistent testnet over the coming weeks.
• Giulio Rebuffo will expand the PQTS explorer with gas-cost breakdowns and execution traces to make implementation performance easier to analyse.

4. Encrypt The Mempool #010

• The Encrypt The Mempool breakout cadence changed from bi-weekly to monthly.
• Post-quantum threshold encryption was deferred indefinitely because the required cryptographic techniques are not considered mature enough.
• Developers selected 50% of total effective stake as the allowlist-admission threshold, while negative voting was rejected because of the additional complexity.

5. FOCIL Breakout #042

• FOCIL Devnet 0 will launch once the Teku-Lodestar interoperability issue is resolved, without waiting for every client implementation.
• Developers adopted a two-track approach, continuing Devnet 0 work while simultaneously developing the FOCIL + Frame Transactions interaction.
• ethrex will prepare a FOCIL + Frames specification PR before the next breakout, while implementation work continues in parallel.

Ethereum Standards Updates

Ethereum standards activity advanced with one new Draft, five proposals moving to Review and EIP-8246 entering Last Call. Glamsterdam-related EIPs saw further specification refinements across EIP-8037, EIP-8038 and EIP-7773.

Hegota’s candidate set continued evolving through DFI updates recorded in EIP-8081. Editor reviews and contributor activity remained strong across Core EIPs, ERCs and ongoing upgrade discussions.

Read the full update on EIPsInsight.

Clients Latest Releases

• Execution Layer:

  • Nethermind 1.39.3
  • Geth 1.17.5
  • Erigon 3.6.1
  • Besu 26.8.1
  • Reth 2.6.0 - NEW RELEASE
  • EthereumJS 10.1.3

• Consensus Layer:

  • Teku 26.9.0 - NEW RELEASE
  • Nimbus 26.8.0
  • Prysm 7.1.8
  • Lodestar 1.48.0 - NEW RELEASE
  • Lighthouse 8.2.2

Podcasts

1. Arc Mainnet, AI Agents, and Tokenized Markets | Nikhil Chandhok, CTO of Circle | Bankless | Nikhil Chandhok: Circle’s Chief Product and Technology Officer discusses Arc mainnet, stablecoin gas, privacy, post-quantum signatures, AI agents and how tokenised markets could operate on new blockchain financial infrastructure.
2. Guy Young on Why Ethena Launched a Neobank on Top of Its Stablecoin | Unchained | Guy Young: Ethena’s founder explains why the company expanded from USDe into Ethena Pay, how stablecoin infrastructure can support consumer financial products and why card spending may become a more important business line than stablecoin yield.
3. Crypto is Ready for Onchain Options | Nick Forster, CEO of Derive | Bankless | Nick Forster: Derive CEO Nick Forster explains why options have lagged perpetual futures in crypto, how on-chain options liquidity is developing and why more sophisticated derivatives trading may increasingly move on-chain.

Upcoming Events

• ETHTokyo Week 2026: Sep 19–27
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• Pragma Tokyo 2026: Sep 26
• TOKEN2049 Singapore: Oct 7–8
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• Pragma Mumbai: Nov 5
• ETHGlobal Mumbai: Nov 6–8

Jobs

• Mysten Labs: Engineering Manager, Wallet
• Phantom: Staff Machine Learning Engineer
• Coinbase: Staff Software Engineer, Wallets, Liquidity & Bridging
• Bybit: Compliance Officer, India
• Anchorage Digital: Client Success & Operations Manager, Token Vesting
• Ramp: Software Engineer, Stablecoin
• Cyclops: Senior Software Engineer, Platform

Community Spotlight

Ethereum’s protocol process is moving into the enterprise room. Ethereum Intelligence, a new initiative designed to help enterprises understand Ethereum’s protocol development process without requiring teams to follow every core developer call, EIP discussion or upgrade repository themselves.

The initiative will run as a six-month pilot, with Pooja Ranjan joining as Program Advisor for Ethereum Protocol Process. The broader goal is to create a recurring bridge between Ethereum’s open protocol-development process and enterprise teams that increasingly depend on Ethereum but may not have the resources to track its governance and upgrade pipeline directly.

Read: Taking Ethereum’s Protocol Process to the Enterprise Room

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