Over the past year, Iran’s Quds Force (part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) has sent cryptocurrencies to militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The Treasury Department also wants to explicitly expand its coverage to include major digital asset players such as cryptocurrency exchanges. It also requires the authority to hold overseas cryptocurrency platforms accountable when they exploit the country’s financial system to the detriment of U.S. national security.

PANews reported on May 27 that according to The block, Ethereum core developers decided at an executive level meeting to launch the Pectra upgrade in the first quarter of 2025. Pectra represents the next major update for Ethereum, succeeding the Dencun upgrade that was effectively implemented in March 2023. The upgrade will incorporate the Ethereum Virtual Machine Object Format (EOF) and contain approximately 11 improvement proposals to enhance the EVM code on Layer1 and Layer2.

Additionally, developers will be adding EIP-7251, “Increase Maximum Effective Balance,” to Pectra. This change will allow individual validators to stake more than 32 ETH, up to 2,048 ETH. Increasing the maximum effective validator balance will allow such operators to manage fewer but higher-stake validators, potentially reducing complexity. The existing account abstraction proposal EIP-3074 will be replaced by Vitalik Buterin’s new proposal EIP-7702.