It’s sad to see this news. It’s been a rough period for Layer 2 ecosystems lately. Blast just shut down, and now Abstract is shutting down too.
But we’re still here and still building. Hopefully, there’s a turnaround ahead. 🙏
Farewell, brother.
Blast will be shutting down.
We launched Blast with the goal of building a self-sustaining chain for users and developers. Unfortunately, the economics of operating the chain no longer make sense: the ongoing costs of maintaining Blast exceed the revenue generated by the L2, and we do not see a credible path to making the chain economically sustainable.
As a result, we've made the difficult decision to wind Blast down.
We're sorry to the users and developers who believed in Blast, built on it, and supported the ecosystem. Our priority now is making the shutdown as smooth and safe as possible.
We're asking all users to withdraw their assets from Blast to Ethereum mainnet, including any balances held in the Blast PWA.
To make this easier, we will be reducing the withdrawal delay to 24 hours.
As part of the shutdown process, we'll first begin withdrawing Blast's Lido assets. This process is expected to take approximately one week. During this period, withdrawals will temporarily be unavailable, even after the withdrawal delay is reduced to 24 hours.
Once that process is complete, withdrawals will resume with the new 24-hour delay.
Users will have until October 26, 2026 to withdraw through the normal Blast interface.
After October 26, assets will remain withdrawable, but users will need to interact directly with the Blast bridge contracts on Ethereum L1. We'll publish detailed instructions before then.
We strongly encourage everyone to withdraw their assets to Ethereum mainnet before October 26.
OpenZK retweeted
Heads-up for anyone maintaining L1 contracts:
→ The Glamsterdam upgrade will include gas repricings (EIP-8037, EIP-8038) that shift state creation and access costs.
→ Most contracts are unaffected, but a small set may break or degrade without updates. Affected contracts rely on assumptions the new schedule changes, such as hardcoded gas values.
Full context in the overview: blog.ethereum.org/2026/08/24…
OpenZK retweeted
LATEST: ⚡️ Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum will be quantum-safe, put users' privacy first, be censorship-resistant, and be lean.
🚀 Big news for the OpenZK community!
After months of relentless effort and continuous development, the OpenZK Network has finally been upgraded to its latest version, bringing its infrastructure in line with zkSync v29, one of the most advanced ZK Layer 2 stacks in the industry.
⚡ Faster block production
Block time has been reduced to just 200 milliseconds, or only 0.2 seconds.
This is a major performance upgrade, delivering faster confirmations and a smoother on-chain experience for users and developers.
🔗 ZK chain interoperability
The upgrade also introduces support for interop messages, allowing different ZK based chains to communicate and transfer messages directly with one another.
In simple terms, ZK chains are no longer isolated islands. This is an important step toward a truly interconnected ZK ecosystem.
🔥 OZK is becoming scarcer
Throughout this year, we have completed multiple token burns, permanently reducing the supply of OZK and making the token increasingly scarce.
But we are not stopping here.
While others slow down during the bear market, OpenZK continues to build. Our next major goal is to make OZK the native settlement token of the OpenZK Chain.
The work is already underway.
Faster blocks. Connected ZK chains. Reduced supply. A stronger role for OZK.
Stay tuned. The next chapter of OpenZK is just getting started. 🔥
OpenZK retweeted
🇺🇸 SEN. LUMMIS: “Europe has its framework. The UK has its framework. The UAE has its framework. The United States will have the Clarity Act.”
OpenZK retweeted
Short-term things being done to shift Ethereum toward native privacy:
* AA + FOCIL (makes privacy protocol txs, among many other things, first-class with strong inclusion guarantees)
* Keyed nonces: xitter.cf/soispoke/status/205163…
* Access-layer work (Kohaku, private reads...)
From privacy breakthroughs to AI agents and institutional rails, the Ethereum ecosystem keeps shipping.
Here are 22 things the ecosystem delivered over the past few weeks.
0/ @gnosis_ and partners introduced The Ethereum Economic Zone (@etheconomiczone), a framework to unify the L1 and L2s into a more composable system with better interoperability.
1/ @aztecnetwork Alpha went live, a feature-complete privacy stack built natively on Ethereum.
2/ @aave V4 was released with a new hub-and-spoke architecture with support for over 20 assets across three initial liquidity hubs.
3/ @PrivacyEthereum released Social Recovery SDK, a wallet recovery model where trusted guardians can help restore access if the owner loses their private key, replacing seed-phrase backups with programmable onchain policy.
4/ Post-quantum wallets launched on @Starknet. A path to quantum resistance without address changes or hard forks.
5/ The @ethereumfndn's Board released the EF Mandate. This document, which was first intended for EF members, reaffirms the promise of Ethereum, and the role of EF within this ecosystem.
6/ Private transfers are live on @Scroll_ZKP. You can now send funds privately onchain, advancing default user protections and confidentiality.
7/ @base introduced Batches Cohort 003. 12 teams were selected from 1,100+ building across AI, DeFi, payments, and prediction markets, pushing forward OnchainApps.
8/ @ethereumfndn launched pq.ethereum (dot) org. Supporting coordination and research in post-quantum cryptography. Two breakthrough papers progressing research on PQ, with input from Ethereum researchers, were also released.
9/ Stablecoins on Ethereum hit a new ATH. Supply surpasses $180B, up 150% in 3 years, with ~60% market share globally, reinforcing Ethereum’s role in stablecoins and DeFi.
10/ @Morpho launched Morpho Agents (beta), allowing users to integrate lending into apps via natural language using AI agents and accelerating the convergence of DeFi and AI.
11/ @thedaofund deployed $1M+ via an Ethereum Security quadratic funding round hosted by @Giveth, funding work to strengthen security across the ecosystem.
12/ Deposit time from L1 to L2s and exchanges can now be as low as 13 seconds due to the new Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR). This new industry standard can be adopted by the ecosystem over the next few months.
13/ @hinkal_protocol launched Hinkal Pay, end-to-end confidential payments where sender, receiver, and amounts remain private.
14/ @peerxyz launched Peer Verify, allowing users to prove their identity, in a privacy-preserving way via ZK proofs.
15/ @ensdomains integrated with PayPal, allowing users to send funds cross-border using ENS names instead of addresses.
16/ @AskVenice shipped verifiable end-to-end encrypted AI, introducing privacy systems that can be externally audited and proven.
17/ @safe released Safenet (beta), a pre-execution security layer for Safe wallets that runs before transactions execute onchain.
18/ @SiloFinance launched Silo V3 for safer lending markets in DeFi. The team rebuilt core assumption behind lending so collateral does not need to be sold to keep markets solvent.
19/ @coinbase announced x402, an initiative to establish the x402 protocol as a universal standard for AI-driven payments, is moving under the Linux Foundation to ensure vendor-neutral, community-governed oversight of the protocol.
20/ @zksync introduced The Cari Network, a new platform to bring tokenized deposits onchain, developed alongside five regional banks and powered by ZKsync’s Prividium.
21/ @EthCC completed their 9th annual event in Cannes with attendees from across the industry. @ETHGlobal hit a milestone with their 300th event following ETHCC, continuing to support builders across the global ecosystem.
🚀Something big is coming in late April!
Yeah, the market’s been bleeding. Bear sentiment everywhere. But while others slow down, we keep building!
Over the past year, we shipped:
– ETH & stablecoin staking
– ETH & stablecoin restaking
– OZK staking
– Exploring OZK as an alternative gas fee beyond Ether
– Cross-chain support for major assets into the OpenZK network.
More features. More expansion. More coming this year.
OpenZK retweeted
Today, the Foundation’s Board released the EF Mandate.
This document, which was first intended for EF members, reaffirms the promise of Ethereum, and the role of EF within this ecosystem.
OpenZK retweeted
⚡️ NEW: Ethereum Foundation is doubling down on DeFi as it forms a dedicated team to focus on builder support, security, and privacy-first finance across the Ethereum ecosystem.
OpenZK retweeted
I actually don't think it's complicated.
IMO the future of onchain mechanism design is mostly going to fit into one pattern:
[something that looks like a prediction market] -> [something that looks like a capture-resistant, non-financialized preference-setting gadget]
In other words:
* One layer that is maximally open and maximizes accountability (it's a market, anyone can buy and sell, if you make good decisions you win money if you make bad decisions you lose money)
* One layer that is decentralized and pluralistic, and that maximizes space for intrinsic motivation. This cannot be token-based, because token owners are not pluralistic, and anyone can buy in and get 51% of them. Votes here should be anonymous, ideally MACI'd to reduce risk of collusion.
The prediction market is the correct way to do a "decentralized executive", because the most logical primitive for "accountability" in a permissionless concept is exactly that.
Though sometimes you will want to keep it simple, and do a centralized executive at that layer instead:
[replaceable centralized executive] -> [something that looks like a capture-resistant, non-financialized preference-setting gadget]
Thinking in these two layers explicitly: (i) what is doing your execution, (ii) what is doing your preference-setting and is judging the executor(s), is best.
Yesterday Vitalik posted about a curation-style creator platform idea, and while it seems like a complicated solution, his idea will likely prove directionally correct in the not so distant future.
Every major social media platform optimizes for popularity contests over quality content creation.
There has to be an opportunity in an alternative approach.
OpenZK retweeted
Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: federalreserve.gov/newsevent…
OpenZK retweeted
Welcome to 2026! Milady is back.
Ethereum did a lot in 2025: gas limits increased, blob count increased, node software quality improved, zkEVMs blasted through their performance milestones, and with zkEVMs and PeerDAS ethereum made its largest step toward being a fundamentally new and more powerful kind of blockchain (more on this later)
But we have a challenge: Ethereum needs to do more to meet its own stated goals. Not the quest of "winning the next meta" regardless of whether it's tokenized dollars or political memecoins, not arbitrarily convincing people to help us fill up blockspace to make ETH ultrasound again, but the mission:
To build the world computer that serves as a central infrastructure piece of a more free and open internet.
We're building decentralized applications. Applications that run without fraud, censorship or third-party interference. Applications that pass the walkaway test: they keep running even if the original developers disappear. Applications where if you're a user, you don't even notice if Cloudflare goes down - or even if all of Cloudflare gets hacked by North Korea. Applications whose stability transcends the rise and fall of companies, ideologies and political parties. And applications that protect your privacy. All this - for finance, and also for identity, governance and whatever other civilizational infrastructure people want to build.
These properties sound radical, but we must remember that a generation ago any wallet, kitchen appliance, book or car would fulfill every single one of them. Today, all of the above are by default becoming subscription services, consigning you to permanent dependence on some centralized overlord.
Ethereum is the rebellion against this.
To achieve this, it needs to be (i) usable, and usable at scale, and (ii) actually decentralized. This needs to happen at both (a) the blockchain layer, including the software we use to run and talk to the blockchain, and (b) the application layer. All of these pieces must be improved - they are already being improved, but they must be improved more.
Fortunately, we have powerful tools on our side - but we need to apply them, and we will.
Wishing everyone an exciting 2026.
Milady.
📣 Big News, OpenZK Community!
OpenZK has just rolled out a major upgrade.
Many of you may have already noticed that our cross-chain bridge now comes with new features.
It is no longer limited to bridging ETH and stablecoins. Mainstream crypto assets are now supported and can be bridged directly to the OpenZK network via our portal.
👉This upgrade brings better application scenarios and more possibilities to the OpenZK ecosystem. Everyone is welcome to try it out.
We have been continuously developing new features, and in 2026, multiple important updates will be launched. Please stay tuned! 🔥

























