Latest news with #EthereumFoundation
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Ethereum Foundation Lays Off Some Staff Amid R&D Restructuring
The Ethereum Foundation has laid off some members of its research and development team as part of a broader restructuring effort aimed at refocusing on critical protocol design challenges, the organization said in a blog post Monday. The shake-up comes as the Switzerland-based nonprofit grapples with ongoing criticism over its management and strategic direction. Some in the Ethereum community have warned for over a year that failure to address key technical hurdles could threaten Ethereum's status as an industry leader, and the organization has already undergone leadership changes in part to address these concerns. The foundation is rebranding its Protocol Research and Development division under the simplified name 'Protocol,' and is repositioning the group around three main priorities: scaling Ethereum's base layer, expanding blobspace (a key part of its data availability strategy), and improving user experience. 'The changes we're announcing today are a departure from our previous ways of working, but we feel these set us on a more responsive and effective path,' the foundation said in its post. The EF did not disclose how many staff were affected by the layoffs. '[S]ome members of PR&D won't be continuing with the Ethereum Foundation,' the blog stated. 'We hope these individuals continue on in the Ethereum ecosystem and encourage others building out their teams to seek them out.' A spokesperson for the foundation did not respond to a request for comment. The restructured Protocol team will serve as a hub for Ethereum's core development efforts, aiming to improve public visibility into upgrade timelines, technical documentation, and research. 'We're hopeful that this new structure will empower our internal teams to focus more clearly and drive key initiatives forward,' said Hsiao-Wei Weng, the co-executive director at the EF in a post on X. Read more: Ethereum Foundation Picks New Co-Executive Directors, Following Leadership Reshuffle
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Ethereum Foundation Lays Off Some Staff Amid R&D Restructuring
The Ethereum Foundation has laid off some members of its research and development team as part of a broader restructuring effort aimed at refocusing on critical protocol design challenges, the organization said in a blog post Monday. The shake-up comes as the Switzerland-based nonprofit grapples with ongoing criticism over its management and strategic direction. Some in the Ethereum community have warned for over a year that failure to address key technical hurdles could threaten Ethereum's status as an industry leader, and the organization has already undergone leadership changes in part to address these concerns. The foundation is rebranding its Protocol Research and Development division under the simplified name 'Protocol,' and is repositioning the group around three main priorities: scaling Ethereum's base layer, expanding blobspace (a key part of its data availability strategy), and improving user experience. 'The changes we're announcing today are a departure from our previous ways of working, but we feel these set us on a more responsive and effective path,' the foundation said in its post. The EF did not disclose how many staff were affected by the layoffs. '[S]ome members of PR&D won't be continuing with the Ethereum Foundation,' the blog stated. 'We hope these individuals continue on in the Ethereum ecosystem and encourage others building out their teams to seek them out.' A spokesperson for the foundation did not respond to a request for comment. The restructured Protocol team will serve as a hub for Ethereum's core development efforts, aiming to improve public visibility into upgrade timelines, technical documentation, and research. 'We're hopeful that this new structure will empower our internal teams to focus more clearly and drive key initiatives forward,' said Hsiao-Wei Weng, the co-executive director at the EF in a post on X. Read more: Ethereum Foundation Picks New Co-Executive Directors, Following Leadership ReshuffleError in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Crypto Insight
3 days ago
- Business
- Crypto Insight
Wintermute's ‘CrimeEnjoyor' to flag Ethereum's wallet-draining contracts
Ethereum users will be warned of a new attack capable of draining their wallets, as crypto market maker Wintermute says it has created code that injects a warning into verified malicious contracts. Wintermute's code, dubbed 'CrimeEnjoyor,' prints a warning within malicious Ethereum contracts that are 'designed to auto-sweep funds' from wallets with leaked private keys, it said in a May 30 X post. The warning reads that the malicious contract 'is used by bad guys to automatically sweep all incoming ETH' and prominently warns to 'NOT SEND ANY ETH.' The malicious contracts exploit a feature introduced in Ethereum's Pectra upgrade, called Ethereum Improvement Proposal-7702 (EIP-7702), that allows users to temporarily delegate control of their wallets to smart contracts, the firm said. Wintermute said that its research team found 'over 97% of all EIP-7702 delegations were authorized to multiple contracts using the same exact code.' 'These are sweepers, used to automatically drain incoming ETH from compromised addresses,' it explained. Wintermute said it to make the CrimeEnjoyor code show up in the malicious contracts, it reversed their Ethereum Virtual Machine bytecode into human-readable Solidity code and publicly verified it. 'This one copy-pasted bytecode now accounts for the majority of all EIP-7702 delegations. It's funny, bleak, and fascinating at the same time.' EIP-7702 is optional, but transparency tools needed EIP-7702 is an opt-in feature and is not required to perform basic Ethereum operations like native token transfers. Wintermute said that while EIP-7702 expands Ethereum's capabilities, a lack of verification makes it more difficult to distinguish legitimate infrastructure from malicious exploitation, particularly for new users. 'With more compromised contracts tagged, more activity can be surfaced and more users can be protected.' One Ethereum user who tapped EIP-7702 lost $146,550 by signing several malicious batched transactions on May 23, blockchain security firm Scam Sniffer pointed out at the time. A total of 12,329 EIP-7702 transactions have been made since the Pectra upgrade went live on Ethereum at the start of epoch 364032 on May 7. Pectra also introduced two other significant upgrades. The first, EIP-725, increased the validator staking limit from 32 Ether to 2,048 ETH to make operations easier for large stakers. Pectra also introduced EIP-7691, which increases the number of data blobs per block with the aim of improving scalability on Ethereum layer 2s and reducing transaction fees. Source:
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ethereum Backers Respond to Critics: ‘Markets Will Catch Up'
TORONTO — Ethereum just completed its most significant upgrade in more than a year, but the milestone comes after a turbulent stretch for the blockchain. The price of ether (ETH) has declined, developers have migrated to rival platforms, and the Ethereum Foundation — a nonprofit steward of the project — has faced criticism for a lack of coordination and vision. Speaking on a panel at CoinDesk's Consensus conference in Toronto, Paul Brody — global blockchain leader at EY and chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance — and Josh Stark of the Ethereum Foundation, offered a more optimistic view of the road ahead. There are two things the community is looking for, Stark said. First, 'the ecosystem needs stronger leadership … Stronger leadership on the roadmap, on executing that roadmap, and really help coordinating the ecosystem to tackle the big challenges.' Second, the network needs better messaging. 'Ethereum's fundamentals are incredibly strong, but few people are standing up to tell the story of that ecosystem and to boost the incredible stuff being built,' Stark said. For all its recent struggles, Stark and Brody maintained that Ethereum remains the most innovative and forward-focused project in crypto. Brody suggested that concerns about the foundation's leadership are particularly overblown, giving the Ethereum Foundation's former executive director, Aya Miyaguchi, top marks for her tenure, which began in 2018 and ended this year. 'Ethereum is a proof-of-stake chain with more than 120 layer-2 networks,' said Broday. Network capacity, he added, is near "300 and 450 million transactions a day." Additionally, "transaction fees at the L2 level — they average under one penny per transaction for the last three months," said Brody. "If I step back and look at [Miyaguchi's] tenure very objectively in terms of the results, I would say A plus.' Miyaguchi transitioned to Ethereum Foundation president in March 2025, installing Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak as its new co-executive directors — part of a leadership restructuring aimed at enhancing the foundation's strategic focus. Some critics have argued Ethereum's roadmap has relied too heavily on layer-2 rollups — independent blockchains that process transactions cheaply and quickly before "settling" their history on Ethereum's main chain. Brody defended the network's rollup-centric roadmap: 'I'm delighted,' he said. While layer-2s like Optimism, Arbitrum and Coinbase's Base network have lowered users' fees — generally considered the main headwind to wider network adoption — skeptics say they also introduce new security risks and fragmentation hurdles that threaten Ethereum's fundamental value proposition. 'Ethereum is being Ethereum,' Brody said. 'Which is, identify a problem, fix it, and move on to the next problem. In terms of the biggest problem that we were dealing with over the last few years, it was scale, right? Going from being able to do a million transactions a day to 450 million network capacity is great.' 'All ecosystems are going to end up with something like an L2 roadmap with modularity and specialization,' Stark added. 'We're just the ones that have gone furthest down this path, and we found the twists and the turns and the challenges on that road, and we're dealing with them.' Ether (ETH), the network's native token, has long been considered a blue-chip crypto asset. But in recent months, it has underperformed relative to some competitors. Network tokens are often viewed as a proxy for an ecosystem's overall health. Bitcoin, Stark noted, has successfully positioned itself as a reliable store of value, helping it weather the market more favorably than Ethereum. 'Ethereum has a more complicated narrative,' he said. Still, Stark expressed confidence that the market would eventually reflect Ethereum's deeper value. 'The world's not going to stop learning about these technologies and these systems,' he said. 'The world is going to have an appetite for a slightly more complicated, but just as real value proposition. And I think we're starting to see that now. So I think that markets eventually price value. And I think that Ethereum is the most important project in crypto and always has been.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ethereum Meant To Be Alternative, Not Rival to Bitcoin: ETH Co-Founder Anthony Di Iorio
Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Iorio shared Thursday that he thinks the blockchain wasn't necessarily meant to be a 'competitor to Bitcoin,' but rather 'it was meant to be an alternative.' Speaking to a crowd at Consensus 2025, Di Iorio shared with the audience about his time during Ethereum's early days, noting back then that he understood that the project could become a really big movement. 'We could sense and feel that it was picking up,' Di Iorio said. Di Iorio was one of the eight co-founders of the Ethereum blockchain, but originally got into cryptocurrency through his advocacy with Bitcoin. He started Bitcoin meetups in Toronto in 2012, and through that met Vitalik Buterin, who came up with the Ethereum whitepaper and shared it with his fellow co-founders. While Di Iorio is still a big Bitcoin proponent, he has said that 'I do think eventually Ethereum has a possibility of overtaking it in terms of market capitalization.' 'With the amount of use cases, and the value that Ethereum is allowing to be created, I think it has that opportunity, in order to possibly overtake it,' Di Iorio added. After stepping away from the Ethereum Foundation, Anthony Di Iorio founded Decentral in 2014, which is best known for creating the Jaxx Liberty crypto wallet. In 2022, he launched Andiami, a project blending hardware, tokenomics, and game theory to tackle centralization vectors within decentralized networks. Read more: Ethereum Co-Founder Di Iorio Unveils Project to Bring Blockchain Computers to a Wider Audience
