Normies, degens, institutions — nobody should have their transactions front-run or censored. The Encrypt the Mempool Coalition is pushing to make that a reality via an EIP in Ethereum’s I* Hardfork. Credibly neutral Ethereum is worth fighting for. 📷 | https://t.co/80bIpykaSs
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.
This week’s Doots guest is @austingriffith - the mind behind BuidlGuidl and Scaffold-ETH, and one of the most relentlessly productive builders in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Tune in right here 1pm ET Friday
https://t.co/0JwkIRwsda
Most fascinating part of the CLARITY act in the House is the bright line decentralization test.
Pass - token is a commodity ✅
Fail - token likely a security❌
According to chatgpt...
BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR, Doge currently pass.
XRP, BNB, SOL, Tron, Aptos, Sui currently fail.
Fun fact: Ethereum has the highest economic security in terms of staked value, AND the most validator nodes AND the most home stakers* out of all top smart contract chains.
Here's a simple image for reference.
Ethereum: 8,200+
Solana: 1,144
Sui: 114
Cardano: 2,990
BSC: 45
Tron: 27
Note: Home stakers are defined here as validator nodes being hosted on a residential connection, instead of a datacenter/cloud provider. I'm not referring to independent node operators (non-institutions/companies), which exist on other chains as well (albeit in small numbers).
Other fun findings:
1. Sui only appears to have 1 independent validator operator (out of 114): @CryptoNelrann
2. Tron also only has 1 (out of 27): @CryptoGuyInZA but his validator is also hosted in AWS (Ohio), hence the 0% home stakers.
3. Even though BSC has 45 active validators only 21 are selected per Epoch to produce blocks.
4. Couldn't find the breakdown for Cardano. Maybe @IOHK_Charles can chime in.
Excluding Ethereum, it appears the validator set of every top smart contract chain is basically just a bunch of crypto companies (CEXs, VCs, staking providers) running nodes in data centers/cloud.
For any serious institution looking to leverage blockchain technology that prioritizes security and decentralization, then Ethereum is the only logical choice.
This is one of the most commonly repeated and stupid takes I see on CT. Often said by those that are either genuinely clueless to the state of "the market", or being disingenuous.
Up until now, what "the market" thinks DOES NOT MATTER.
I've created a simple illustration to show what "the market" has been up until now (2016-2024) and why previous price action is not to be taken seriously.
ETH doubters love to dismiss the idea of fundamentals mattering by parroting some variation of:
"the market has decided BTC is a better SOV"
"market has decided because ETH/BTC ratio"
"market has decided VC alt L1 is better than ETH"
"the market has decided ETH needs to [insert backfilled narrative] to be valuable"
What the "market" thinks can be disregarded when you realize the entire crypto space up until now (pre 2025) has just been one giant joke of a casino, all driven by speculation, dominated by this small subset of investors:
1. Crypto VCs/hedge funds/founders trying to pump their own bags.
2. Saylor infinite bidding billions into BTC since 2020.
3. Uninformed retail driven by greed chasing after the next BTC/ETH via ICOs, NFTs, and meme coins.
None of those 3 categories of investors (which was basically the entirety of the crypto space outside of developers) had any incentives to buy ETH, simply because it's more profitable for VCs to invest in projects they can get in at seed rounds, and low cap memes/tokens were more enticing to retail dreaming for a 100x.
This all happened in a hostile regulatory environment, where crypto basically had zero non-speculative use cases, no ETFs, and no legitimate adoption.
After a decade of the above clown show we are finally entering a new era of regulatory clarity under a pro crypto administration, and real adoption via RWA tokenization+stablecoins from some of the world's largest institutions/entities.
Where is the overwhelming majority of that adoption taking place on? The answer is Ethereum and the ticker is $ETH.
Information asymmetry exists and crypto is still an incredibly small and inefficient market. Still don't believe me after seeing this photo? Go ask 100 random people on the street how many have heard of Ethereum and actually know what it does vs if they've heard of Bitcoin. For the record it took Tradfi almost 15 years just to finally understand a simple asset with no utility like BTC.
TLDR: Last decade of crypto markets took place during operation chokepoint 2.0, had no adoption, and was just a small bubble of grifters and clueless retail investors fighting each other for exit liquidity. Real adoption is just beginning and Ethereum is the default choice.
Disregard anyone that thinks this highly esteemed "market" from the past decade is what decides the future of Ethereum.
Tag anyone you know that loves to bring up "the market" and "ETH" in the same sentence.
Another 1% of $PROMPT is up for grabs as part of @AIwayfinder's community campaign!
Activate your agent at https://t.co/yIBUfymIP4 & complete the missions to earn 2% allocation for testers and supporting our community!
🔗 https://t.co/EPPUt91VZr
Eligibility check is NOW LIVE for Definitive's EDGE airdrop
✅ ONCHAIN TRADOOORS ELIGIBLE
If you're actively trading on Definitive, @JupiterExchange, @0xProject, @odosprotocol, @HyperliquidX, @tradewithPhoton, @bullx_io, @bananagun or @DriftProtocol
>> CHECK YOUR ELIGIBILITY
🪂 REFER AND EARN +20% MORE EDGE
Get MORE EDGE tokens when you refer eligible traders - you'll earn a +20% bonus on their baseline allocated amount of EDGE.
♥️ WE STILL LOVE YOU
Not eligible? We still love you. Just create an account, make your first trade on Definitive to be eligible for our Last Chance Drawing.
⏩ CHECK YOUR ELIGIBILITY NOW
>> claim./definitive./fi
Fun fact: The @ethereumfndn has less than 0.26% (~270K Ξ) of the $ETH supply (120.6M). To effectively attack the chain you'd need 50%+ of all staked ETH (33.6M Ξ). The EF doesn't stake, and even if they staked it all they'd only make up 0.8% of staked ETH (270K/34M). 0.8%<50%
If you're going to FUD ETH in 2025 at least try to make it a little believable. 🤦♂️
Everyone fudding $ETH completely ignores the fact that:
$XRP is 99% more useless, has 50% the mcap
$SOL has no adoption outside the meme casino and the casino is 💀, at 28% the mcap
Meanwhile, the world is coming on chain.
And $ETH leads the way in virtually every metric.
This is what BlackRock presents to their clients when they talk about ETH.
Institutional investors are REALLY interested in those things, they're powerful use cases and easy to understand for them.
These fundamentals for Ethereum are only getting stronger by the day. Easing regulations, more stablecoins minted onchain, easier access, all the while Ethereum is delivering Pectra very soon.
If you had to remember one thing:
Ethereum is the new financial system.
Why I’m bullish on $ETH long term. World’s largest asset manager @BlackRock explains the difference between $ETH & $BTC.
ETH = a long term bet on real utility and use cases.
BTC = a bet on “price has historically done well, it may keep going up!”
Ethereum is on another level.