Ethereum is metaphorically at war. The network is entering a relentless push to scale, coordinate and fortify its position as the settlement layer of the internet…and the urgency isn’t just about speed, but coordination.

Virtuals’ revenue numbers don’t look good:

Virtuals protocol, the leading AI agent launchpad on Base, is seeing a constant decline in revenue. Yesterday saw daily net revenues (defined as gross revenues minus fees allocated to non-bonding curve swaps) of $14.7k, the lowest it's been since the app went viral last November. 

Incidentally, the team behind Virtuals is gearing up for an expansion to Solana next week. Based on cookie.fun’s numbers, the market cap size of Solana’s “agent economy” is about $5.3 billion today vs. $4 billion on Base. It might be the tailwind Virtuals needs to turn things around, so keep an eye on this chart.

 — Donovan Choy

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📅 June 24–26 | Brooklyn, NY

‘Wartime’ Ethereum

The past week has seen a pronounced shift in the level of optimism around Ethereum. 

Across sequencing, interoperability and consensus development, teams are working under wartime conditions to standardize, consolidate and deliver on Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap.

The urgency isn’t just about speed but about coordination: making sure the protocol evolves in a way that’s both extensible and durable.

That was the message from Optimism’s Ben Jones, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, and others on a recent developer call. Although superficially gathering to chat sequencing and preconfirmations, the call was primarily an exercise in ecosystem alignment. 

Sequencing: From fragmentation to alignment

Ethereum’s sequencing landscape is chaotic. Every rollup builds its own isolated sequencing mechanism, with little interoperability. 

The push toward Ethereum-aligned sequencing — whether through proposer commitments, shared sequencing or native rollups — is an attempt to solve this.

On the sequencing call, Jones framed the moment: “The idea isn’t just about individual rollups optimizing for their own benefit, but about creating a shared sequencing architecture that aligns incentives while preserving autonomy.”

Instead of forcing every rollup to conform to a single rigid standard, the goal is to find common ground, standardizing what makes sense (e.g., proofs, commitments, core infrastructure) while leaving space for innovation. And getting all relevant stakeholders in a room together to resolve any disagreements that may persist.

It’s a radical change of tone, reinforcing a commitment to solve UX pain points that have fragmented the ecosystem’s user base and capital.

Solving interop and process pain points

The L2 Interop Working Group is tackling another wartime front: how to make cross-rollup transactions as seamless as same-chain transactions. ERC-7786 is emerging as a standardized cross-chain messaging API, ensuring that rollups can pass data between each other without reinventing the wheel.

But even with shared messaging interfaces, execution must be fast and trustless. The target? Sub-three-slot finality for cross-rollup transactions — meaning interop between Optimism and Arbitrum could settle in as little as six seconds. That would go a long way toward making rollups feel less like islands and more like unified Ethereum extensions.

Ethereum’s base layer isn’t standing still, either. Thursday’s ACD call firmed up the date that the Pectra fork will hit the testnets — Feb. 19 for Holesky’s, followed by Sepolia on Feb. 25 — with mainnet upgrades targeted for mid-March. 

Even long-standing debates over planning and alignment seem to be making progress. Core developers agreed on the need for disciplined feature scoping, and to prioritize fully implemented and tested proposals rather than overloading devnets with speculative upgrades — a course correction of sorts, according to Tim Beiko.

“What we should not do, and what we did wrong with Pectra and caused months of delay, is schedule 10 unimplemented things for inclusion,” he said. Instead, the goal is to move toward a structured development cadence, where each fork is well-defined and tested before new complexities are introduced.

Ethereum’s roadmap isn’t dictated solely by external competition but more so the internal drive to build a coherent, durable system. The goal is not just to scale, but to scale the right way — with shared sequencing, deep interop and a resilient neutral L1. But everyone agrees that processes need to accelerate.

— Macauley Peterson

Jito turns on fee switch

If you’re staking SOL on Jito, or you’re a JTO token holder, rejoice! Value accrual is officially here for one of Solana’s most profitable businesses.

Launched yesterday, Jito protocol’s new MEV distribution network “TipRouter” will redistribute 0.3% of all MEV tips to Jito restakers and SOL stakers on its platform. Assuming annualized MEV tips of $3.26 billion, that’s about $978 million in value flowing to both sets of stakeholders.

Based on Blockworks Research estimates, that translates to about 2.86% and 44.1% APY. Expect these yields to taper off as market participants catch on to the opportunity. However, note these real yields are stacked on top of the already existing staking/restaking yields that users are receiving. In other words, the total yield for staking SOL on Jito would be the current staking rate of 10% APY plus 2.86% from Jito’s new value dividends.

For more insights on how this changes JTO’s valuations, see Blockworks Research’s report by analyst Carlos Gonzalez.

— Donovan Choy