The Protocol: Ethereum Turns Ten

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of a very powerful tales in cryptocurrency tech growth. I'm Margaux Nijkerk, CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols reporter.

In this situation:

• Ethereum At 10: Where Next For The World Computer?
• Linea to Burn ETH With Every Transaction in Bold L2 Upgrade
• Solana Players Unveil ‘Internet Capital Markets’ Roadmap
• Square Begins Rollout of Bitcoin Payments for Sellers, Targets Full Availability by 2026

Network 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 increase the boundaries of blockchain know-how itself. While Bitcoin turned digital gold, Ethereum pursued a extra expansive imaginative and prescient: to be a decentralized “World Computer”—programmable, extensible, and open-ended. A decade later, Ethereum has remodeled finance, tradition and software program. Along the way in which, it has confronted existential crises, unstable markets and fierce inner 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 challenge hits the ten 12 months milestone, with the worth of ether (ETH) rebounding to succeed in $3,800 in July, after it languishing round $1,500 as recnetly as April. Over the previous few months, the ecosystem has seen a brand new wave of use circumstances together with tokenization and stablecoin development, and the community additionally benefited from the pattern of firms 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 extra.

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 material. Linea’s up to date street 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 “position Ethereum to meet the needs of sophisticated capital as TradFi begins to onboard to DeFi, and reinforce Linea as a major home of future innovations 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 web transaction charges towards lowering Ethereum provide. The remaining 80% of charges will probably be used to burn LINEA tokens, that are capped in provide, embedding deflationary stress straight into community exercise. “Linea Mainnet will burn ETH with every transaction, use the LINEA token to support users, builders, and public goods, and return value to Ethereum’s base layer, all while growing long-term value in the LINEA token-based economy,” mentioned Declan Fox, Head of Linea, within the press launch. — Margaux Nijkerk Read extra.

SOLANA PLAYERS UNVEIL ‘INTERNET CAPITAL MARKETS’ ROADMAP: Solana’s ecosystem is coalescing round an up to date imaginative and prescient its architects name “Internet Capital Markets”—a decentralized, high-performance basis for the following technology of on-chain monetary functions. While the community has lengthy targeted on boosting bandwidth and slashing latency, its newest roadmap dives deep into market microstructure, arguing that the following leap ahead lies in giving functions granular management over transaction execution. The roadmap, which was coauthored from leaders of the Solana Foundation, Anza, Jito Labs, DoubleZero, Drift and Multicoin Capital, facilities on Application-Controlled Execution (ACE), which can give good contracts millisecond-level authority over transaction sequencing. “In our conversations with teams across the ecosystem, market microstructure is the single most important problem in Solana today,” the authors wrote. The new roadmap, revealed 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 extra.

SQUARE BEGINS ROLLOUT OF BTC PAYMENTS FOR SELLERS: Jack Dorsey's Square (XYZ) has begun the rollout of bitcoin funds for retailers on its community. Square started onboarding the primary sellers, enabling them to simply accept Lightning Network-powered BTC funds from prospects, Owen Jennings, govt officer at Square's father or mother firm Block (XYZ), posted on X final week. Payments are settled in real-near time utilizing Bitcoin layer-2 Lightning, with Square processing the alternate into fiat. Square plans to make the service obtainable to all retailers utilizing its gross sales platform by subsequent 12 months. The firm piloted the system on the Bitcoin 2025 convention in Las Vegas in May, permitting attendees to make purchases in BTC by scanning a barcode. — Jamie Crawley Read extra.

In Other News

• Strategy (MSTR), the biggest company proprietor of bitcoin mentioned it has acquired roughly $2.4 billion value of BTC utilizing the funds from its new most popular inventory (STRC) issuance. The agency offered almost $2.5 billion value of STRC, additionally dubbed “stretch,” to traders, considerably greater than the initially deliberate $500 million. STRC, which goals to ship an everyday dividend to traders 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 mean value of $117,256, in line with a press launch. That brings Strategy's bitcoin holdings to 628,791 BTC, value almost $74 billion at present costs. — Krisztian Sandor Read extra.
• 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, value roughly $1.68 billion at present costs. The firm purchased 77,209 ether (ETH), or $297 million, via 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 May 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 extra.

Regulatory and Policy

• The digital belongings business's most dependable U.S. Senate ally, Cynthia Lummis, has launched her newest crypto invoice, which might guarantee mortgage debtors might use their cryptocurrency holdings to assist safe their loans. Last month, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte directed government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide you with proposals detailing how they will embody crypto holdings to underpin a mortgage. Lummis' invoice would “permit the holdings of a borrower in a digital asset, evidenced and maintained pursuant to a qualified custodial arrangement, to be included in the reserves of a borrower without conversion of the digital asset to United States dollars” — primarily codifying what Pulte is already in search of. “This legislation embraces an innovative path to wealth-building, keeping in mind the growing number of young Americans who possess digital assets,” Lummis mentioned in a press release, suggesting these belongings may assist bridge the hole to in any other case unobtainable dwelling possession. — Jesse Hamilton Read extra.
• Roman Storm, the Tornado Cash developer standing trial in Manhattan on prices that the privateness device he created helped hackers and different cyber criminals launder greater than $1 billion in felony proceeds, gained't take the stand, his legal professionals instructed the court docket. Storm instructed District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that he was conscious that he had the appropriate to testify in his personal protection however selected to not. After Storm made his choice, his protection workforce, led by Keri Axel and Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP, rested their case on Tuesday afternoon. — Cheyenne Ligon Read extra.

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
• May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami