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GM, Tim here.

Here’s what caught my DeFi-eye recently:

• Ethereum devs target early 2025 for next major upgrade.

• DL News talks to the brains behind the second Solana phone.

• Consensys CEO hints at how the firm might go public and acquisitions.

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade

Ethereum’s core developers are targeting the first quarter of 2025 for the network’s next major upgrade.

The plan was solidified in the latest Execution Layer Meeting, a fortnightly gathering of Ethereum developers.

Dubbed Pectra, the hard fork will introduce several new EIPs — or Ethereum Improvement Proposals — with a focus on user-centric improvements.

Perhaps the biggest change planned for Pectra is Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s EIP-7702.

The EIP, which Buterin wrote in just 22 minutes, aims to speed up the adoption of Account Abstraction.

Account Abstraction promises to make Ethereum more intuitive and safer to use.

It gives Ethereum wallets the ability to programme transactions, allowing blockchains to replicate services banks and other money-transmitting services offer, such as scheduling payments.

Pectra will also introduce the EVM Object Format through a group of 11 EIPs to make it easier for developers to introduce new features and deprecate old ones.

Solana phone ‘madness’

Solana Labs is deep in development for its second smartphone — dubbed Chapter 2.

DL News’ Liam Kelly sat down with Steven Laver, the project’s lead software engineer.

“This has that big, sky’s the limit energy,” Laver told DL News in a rare interview. “This feels like madness, but at the same time, this feels like the end result.”

Solana’s plan for Chapter 2 is ambitious.

It wants to liberate crypto from desktop computers and the dominance of app platforms.

The Apple App Store has removed crypto apps — most notably MetaMask in October. It was later reinstated.

Both the Apple App Store and Google’s Play Store charge developers fees between 15% and 30%.

Solana, Laver said, will offer an alternative.

“We take a much lighter hand with our policy,” he said. “We’re trying our best to get out of the way.”

Consensys teases plans

Consensys CEO Joe Lubin says his company could use crypto-native methods to tap public investment.

“If we do go public in some form, we’ve always been biased to using our own technology to do something,” Lubin told DL News.

Consensys is one of crypto’s biggest companies. It’s behind several widely-used tools such as the MetaMask wallet and infrastructure suite Infura.

In the crypto world, many view projects’ tokenisation or airdrop events — in which a token is created and distributed to its most loyal users — as akin to initial public offerings.

For years, there have been hints about a MetaMask airdrop. With more than 30 million users, the distribution of a MetaMask token would make quite a splash.

Lubin said Consensys is also eyeing acquisitions.

“The board just approved something,” he said. “We’re very active.”

Other than hinting it was a venture in the cybersecurity area, Lubin was coy on the details.

Data of the week

Deposits to Ethereum layer 2 blockchains just hit an all-time high of $47.4 billion, per data from L2Beat.

But in Ether terms, token have been flowing out of layer 2s since an all-time high on May 13.

Ether’s 25% rally since Bloomberg Intelligence analysts revised their odds of a spot Ethereum ETF on May 20 has helped buoy the metric.

This week in DeFi governance

VOTE: Redacted rebrands to Dinero Protocol

VOTE: Radiant DAO supports protocol’s expansion to Base

VOTE: CoW DAO lowers bonding requirements for CoW Protocol solvers

Post of the week

DefiLlama dev 0xngmi proposes a new lending protocol optimised for looping redeemable assets, like Ether and its liquid staking and restaking tokens.

LSD/LRT<>ETH looped lending has seen insane growth, however lending protocols are built for the general case

I propose a lending protocol optimized for redeemable assets, which achieves higher APYs with lower risks (bad debt is IMPOSSIBLE)https://t.co/HNqP3V0is6 pic.twitter.com/6WE5FWnC6V

— 0xngmi (@0xngmi) May 26, 2024

What we’re watching...

🗣️ Next Friday, May 31, the UF will initiate the onchain vote to upgrade the Protocol so that its fee mechanism can reward UNI token holders that have staked and delegated their tokens.

If you are a UNI holder who wants to vote on this proposal, you **must** have your UNI…

— Uniswap Foundation (@UniswapFND) May 24, 2024

Uniswap’s DAO will finally vote on whether to change the protocol so its fee mechanism can reward UNI token holders.

Got a tip about DeFi? Reach out at tim@dlnews.com.