Welcome to our weekly digest, where we unpack the latest in account and chain abstraction, and the broader infrastructure shaping Ethereum.
This week: Ethereum's Glamsterdam fork enters its final development stage with ePBS and block-level access lists; a former Ethereum Foundation contributor sounds the alarm on Ethereum's looming protocol funding crisis; Base ships its Beryl upgrade to testnet with the B20 native token standard and faster withdrawals, and Movement goes live on NEAR Intents for one-click swaps across 30+ chains.
- Glamsterdam Enters Its Final Development Stage
- A Former EF Contributor Flags a Funding Crisis
- Base Beryl Upgrade Goes Live on Testnet
- Movement Goes Live on NEAR Intents
Please fasten your belts!
Glamsterdam Enters Its Final Development Stage
Ethereum’s next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, has entered its final development stage. Developers are now running devnets containing the full suite of planned EIPs, the last phase before the code is hardened and shipped to public testnets, with activation expected in the second half of the year.
Ethereum Foundation developer Parithosh Jayanthi has described it as likely the largest fork since the Merge, one that will change many assumptions about Ethereum and set the stage for much more scaling. Two proposals headline the release.
The first is enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS, EIP-7732), which moves the split between block builders and proposers into the core protocol. Today, that process relies on off-chain relays with extra trust assumptions, so bringing it on-chain aims to reduce MEV-related manipulation and centralization concerns.
The second is Block-level Access Lists (EIP-7928), which let blocks declare in advance which accounts and contract data they intend to access, so clients can preload state and execute faster. Glamsterdam also bundles a sweeping gas repricing that makes high-level compute cheaper and state more expensive.
The repricings are intended to make Ethereum’s fees better reflect the resources each operation consumes, while also easing scaling with zero-knowledge proving systems. Developers are now focused on testing, finalizing specs, and community outreach about the fee changes before shipping.
A Former EF Contributor Flags a Funding Crisis
In a widely shared essay titled “Succession After Subtraction,” former Ethereum Foundation contributor Trent Van Epps (trent.eth) warns of a looming protocol funding crisis. Drawing on five years coordinating core development and Protocol Guild, he argues the ecosystem needs a reset of how it funds and stewards the protocol.
The backdrop is the EF’s long-stated “Subtraction” philosophy — deliberately reducing the Foundation’s relative influence over time. Van Epps respects the aim, but notes that legitimacy tends to pool, leaving the EF still uniquely central even as it steps back.
The practical pressure is financial. A June 2025 treasury plan sets a glide path from 15% annual spend toward a 5% endowment baseline by 2030, while the four-year Client Incentive Program, which funded client teams via staking, expired in April 2026 with no replacement yet announced.
Van Epps estimates core development costs at roughly $30 million a year across more than ten client, research and coordination teams, and warns of a slow-burning funding crisis within three to nine months. The risk, he argues, is losing contributors with years of hard-won context just as Ethereum faces challenges like quantum computing and scaling.
His proposed direction is to create new institutions and neutral, accountable funding mechanisms, including in-protocol funding, to support Ethereum’s next decade. He points to Vitalik’s own view that the Foundation was never designed to be an eternal steward of the protocol.
Base Beryl Upgrade Goes Live on Testnet
Base, Coinbase’s OP Stack Layer 2, has shipped its Beryl upgrade to testnet, with mainnet activation set for June 25. Beryl bundles three changes that touch the whole stack: a new native token standard called B20, a shorter withdrawal window, and a full execution-client overhaul with Reth V2.
The headline feature is B20, Base’s own token standard. Unlike ERC-20 tokens that deploy as standalone smart contracts, B20 tokens run as Rust precompiles baked directly into the node software, executing at the protocol level while keeping full ERC-20 compatibility. It ships with a built-in compliance toolkit, transfer policies, freeze-and-seize, role-based access, supply caps, and EIP-2612 permits, aimed at stablecoin and real-world-asset issuers.
Beryl also trims the canonical bridge’s withdrawal finalization from seven days to five, letting users and liquidity providers redeploy capital sooner with no action required. Under the hood, Reth V2 cuts node disk usage roughly in half and lifts throughput by about a third, giving operators headroom as Base pushes toward its 1 gigagas-per-second target.
For our readers, the most interesting part is what comes next. Base’s following upgrade, Cobalt, targeted for September, is slated to bring native account abstraction, making smart accounts first-class at the protocol level with gas sponsorship and transaction batching, and requiring no extra contracts.
Movement Goes Live on NEAR Intents
Movement, a stablecoin settlement and yield platform, is now live on NEAR Intents. With the integration, users can swap MOVE tokens and USDCx for more than 100 native assets across 30+ chains in a single click.
It’s a clean illustration of chain abstraction in practice. Rather than manually bridging assets or juggling gas tokens across networks, users declare the outcome they want, and NEAR Intents handles the cross-chain routing and settlement behind the scenes.
The integration also opens up yield. Partners offering yield products on Movement can now accept and settle eligible user deposits from any connected chain — the first production intent integration on the platform.
NEAR positions Intents and chain abstraction as core to its design, alongside user-owned AI and its Nightshade sharding. The broader pattern is a familiar one for AA readers: abstract away the chain, and let people transact by intent rather than wrestling with infrastructure.
🛠️ Builder note: Etherspot
AA infra should make development easier, not harder.
- One RPC endpoint across chains
- Pay-as-you-go pricing on mainnet
- No markup on gas fees
- API key controls with built-in security
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