Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of crucial tales in cryptocurrency tech growth. I am Margaux Nijkerk, CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols reporter.
On this difficulty:
- Ethereum At 10: The place Subsequent For The World Laptop?
- Linea to Burn ETH With Each Transaction in Daring L2 Improve
- Solana Gamers Unveil ‘Web Capital Markets’ Roadmap
- Sq. Begins Rollout of Bitcoin Funds for Sellers, Targets Full Availability by 2026
Community information
10 YEARS OF ETHEREUM: When Ethereum launched on July 30, 2015, it got down to be extra than simply one other cryptocurrency. It aimed to develop the boundaries of blockchain expertise itself. Whereas Bitcoin turned digital gold, Ethereum pursued a extra expansive imaginative and prescient: to be a decentralized “World Laptop”—programmable, extensible, and open-ended. A decade later, Ethereum has remodeled finance, tradition and software program. Alongside the way in which, it has confronted existential crises, unstable markets and fierce inside debates. Now, it stands on the cusp of a brand new period—one that will see it totally embraced by conventional finance. Ethereum has seen an uptick within the final two months because the mission hits the ten 12 months milestone, with the worth of ether (ETH) rebounding to achieve $3,800 in July, after it languishing round $1,500 as recnetly as April. Over the previous couple of months, the ecosystem has seen a brand new wave of use instances together with tokenization and stablecoin progress, and the community also benefited from the trend of companies holding ETH of their treasuries, not only for long-term worth, however to earn yield. On the anniversary, main gamers from Ethereum’s ecosystem weigh in on the final 10 years. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
LINEA’S COMPREHENSIVE PROTOCOL CHANGES: Linea, an Ethereum layer-2 community incubated by Consensys, has unveiled a complete suite of upgrades designed to embed the community deeper into the layer 1’s financial and ideological cloth. Linea’s up to date highway map, anticipated to roll out in October 2025, introduces ETH-native staking on bridged belongings, a protocol-level ETH burn mechanism, and the allocation of 85% of its token provide to ecosystem growth. This transfer comes as momentum within the Ethereum ecosystem is constructing, due to the rising institutional curiosity. The Linea workforce wrote in a press launch shared with CoinDesk that their updates will “place Ethereum to satisfy the wants of refined capital as TradFi begins to onboard to DeFi, and reinforce Linea as a serious dwelling of future improvements in on-chain capital markets, staking, and infrastructure.” The workforce claims that of the updates, Linea will turn out to be the primary layer 2 to burn ETH on the protocol stage and commit 20% of internet transaction charges towards lowering Ethereum provide. The remaining 80% of charges shall be used to burn LINEA tokens, that are capped in provide, embedding deflationary strain instantly into community exercise. “Linea Mainnet will burn ETH with each transaction, use the LINEA token to help customers, builders, and public items, and return worth to Ethereum’s base layer, all whereas rising long-term worth within the LINEA token-based financial system,” mentioned Declan Fox, Head of Linea, within the press launch. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
SOLANA PLAYERS UNVEIL ‘INTERNET CAPITAL MARKETS’ ROADMAP: Solana’s ecosystem is coalescing round an up to date imaginative and prescient its architects name “Web Capital Markets”—a decentralized, high-performance basis for the subsequent era of on-chain monetary purposes. Whereas the community has lengthy targeted on boosting bandwidth and slashing latency, its jobs roadmap dives deep into market microstructure, arguing that the subsequent leap ahead lies in giving purposes granular management over transaction execution. The roadmap, which was coauthored from leaders of the Solana Basis, Anza, Jito Labs, DoubleZero, Drift and Multicoin Capital, facilities on Software-Managed Execution (ACE), which can give sensible contracts millisecond-level authority over transaction sequencing. “In our conversations with groups throughout the ecosystem, market microstructure is the one most necessary downside in Solana at present,” the authors wrote. The brand new roadmap, printed by Anza, a core contributor to the Solana blockchain, outlines six vital tradeoff dimensions: privateness vs. transparency, speedbumps vs. unfettered buying and selling, inclusion vs. finality vs. latency, colocation vs. geographic decentralization, makers-first vs. takers-first priorities and versatile vs. opinionated structure. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
SQUARE BEGINS ROLLOUT OF BTC PAYMENTS FOR SELLERS: Jack Dorsey’s Sq. (XYZ) has begun the rollout of bitcoin funds for retailers on its community. Sq. started onboarding the primary sellers, enabling them to just accept Lightning Community-powered BTC funds from prospects, Owen Jennings, government officer at Sq.’s father or mother firm Block (XYZ), posted on X last week. Funds are settled in real-near time utilizing Bitcoin layer-2 Lightning, with Sq. processing the alternate into fiat. Sq. plans to make the service obtainable to all retailers utilizing its gross sales platform by subsequent 12 months. The corporate piloted the system at the Bitcoin 2025 convention in Las Vegas in Might, permitting attendees to make purchases in BTC by scanning a barcode. — Jamie Crawley Read more.
In Different Information
- Technique (MSTR), the biggest company proprietor of bitcoin said it has acquired roughly $2.4 billion price of BTC utilizing the funds from its new most popular inventory (STRC) issuance. The agency offered almost $2.5 billion price of STRC, additionally dubbed “stretch,” to buyers, considerably greater than the initially deliberate $500 million. STRC, which goals to ship an everyday dividend to buyers initially set at a 9% charge, will begin buying and selling on Wednesday on Nasdaq. With the proceeds, the corporate bought 21,021 BTC at a median value of $117,256, in keeping with a press release. That brings Technique’s bitcoin holdings to 628,791 BTC, price almost $74 billion at present costs. — Krisztian Sandor Read more.
- SharpLink Gaming (SBET), the Nasdaq-listed crypto treasury agency helmed by Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin, unveiled that its ether (ETH) holdings elevated to 438,190 tokens, price roughly $1.68 billion at present costs. The corporate purchased 77,209 ether (ETH), or $297 million, by way of the week ending on July 27. It has additionally raised $279 million by promoting shares, tapping at-the-market fairness facility. The Minneapolis-based agency has pursued an aggressive treasury technique since its late Might pivot, elevating funds to build up the second-largest cryptocurrency and staking the tokens in alternate for rewards. The agency mentioned it has earned 722 ETH since then. — Kristzian Sandor Read more.
Regulatory and Coverage
- The digital belongings business’s most dependable U.S. Senate ally, Cynthia Lummis, has launched her latest crypto bill, which might guarantee mortgage debtors might use their cryptocurrency holdings to assist safe their loans. Final month, Federal Housing Finance Company Director William Pulte directed government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give you proposals detailing how they will embody crypto holdings to underpin a mortgage. Lummis’ invoice would “allow the holdings of a borrower in a digital asset, evidenced and maintained pursuant to a certified custodial association, to be included within the reserves of a borrower with out conversion of the digital asset to United States {dollars}” — basically codifying what Pulte is already searching for. “This laws embraces an progressive path to wealth-building, maintaining in thoughts the rising variety of younger People who possess digital belongings,” Lummis mentioned in a press release, suggesting these belongings would possibly assist bridge the hole to in any other case unobtainable dwelling possession. — Jesse Hamilton Read more.
- Roman Storm, the Twister Money developer standing trial in Manhattan on prices that the privateness instrument he created helped hackers and different cyber criminals launder greater than $1 billion in legal proceeds, will not take the stand, his attorneys advised the courtroom. Storm advised District Decide Katherine Polk Failla of the U.S. District Courtroom of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that he was conscious that he had the proper to testify in his personal protection however selected to not. After Storm made his determination, his protection workforce, led by Keri Axel and Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP, rested their case on Tuesday afternoon. — Cheyenne Ligon Read more.
Calendar
- Sept. 22-28: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
- Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore
- Oct. 13-15: Digital Asset Summit, London
- Oct. 16-17: European Blockchain Convention, Barcelona
- Nov. 17-22: Devconnect, Buenos Aires
- Dec. 11-13: Solana Breakpoint, Abu Dhabi
- Feb. 10-12, 2026: Consensus, Hong Kong
- Might 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami