Reports on Ethereum Market Research Center

Ethereum Scaling: An Evolving and Strengthening L1–L2 Relationship

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 02:12:06 +0000

Ethereum isn’t moving away from L2s—it’s entering a stronger phase where L1 scaling and L2 innovation advance together. As Ethereum scales directly on L1, L2s are freed to differentiate, specialize, and innovate beyond pure scaling. The result is a more resilient, flexible, and bullish Ethereum ecosystem with deeper interoperability and broader use cases.

There have recently been thoughtful discussions about the evolving role of L2s within the Ethereum ecosystem, particularly in light of two important developments:

The Internet's Blueprint for Ethereum: A Trillion-Dollar Public Goods Valuation Framework

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 01:53:29 +0000

This report argues that Ethereum is fundamentally mispriced because markets value it as a for-profit company rather than as a public good. Like the Internet’s base protocols (TCP/IP), Ethereum’s true economic power lies not in the fees it extracts (revenue), but in the vast ecosystem of value it enables (externalities) . Traditional financial metrics fail to capture this “invisible” infrastructure value.

DOWNLOAD REPORT (or read the executive summary first, below)

The research proposes a holistic valuation framework for “Ethereum-the-System” based on three distinct lenses:

Understanding the Implications of the Ethereum Gas Limit Increase

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 11:22:20 +0000

Executive Summary

The Fusaka upgrade is an upcoming Ethereum hard fork (tentatively scheduled for late 2025 / December 3, 2025) that bundles a set of protocol enhancements intended to scale Ethereum in a measured, low-risk way. (QuickNode Blog)
A key change expected is a substantial increase in the block gas limit (various sources point to increases up to ~150 million gas units). (Bankless)
Alongside the gas bump, Fusaka emphasizes data availability innovations (PeerDAS) and incremental changes to contract execution models. (QuickNode Blog)
From a business lens, the gas limit increase is effectively an expansion of Ethereum’s transactional capacity “headroom”, lowering pressure during peak times, stabilizing costs, and enabling more ambitious applications — all while requiring vigilance on validator / infrastructure demands, decentralization, and new equilibrium dynamics.
In the following sections, the report (1) contextualizes the upgrade and the gas limit change, (2) unpacks business implications and benefits, (3) highlights risks and tradeoffs, (4) offers strategic recommendations, and (5) presents a visual summary / infographic concept.

Context & Technical Background (Business-Relevant)

Ethereum’s Road to Fusaka

Ethereum’s scaling roadmap (often framed as the “Surge / Verge / Purge / Splurge” phases) includes periodic upgrades to improve throughput, data availability, and state management. Fusaka is part of this sequence. (LBank)

Ethereum’s Fusaka Upgrade: Scaling Smartly Without Sacrificing Decentralization

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 15:28:17 +0000

Ethereum’s roadmap has always been defined by a delicate balancing act: scaling for global use while remaining decentralized enough for anyone to participate. Each major upgrade—whether it was the Merge, the Dencun rollout, or now Fusaka—pushes the protocol closer to that equilibrium.

The upcoming Fusaka upgrade represents another step in Ethereum’s quiet revolution toward sustainable scalability. It introduces a new way for nodes to share the burden of storing and transmitting data through a system called PeerDAS (Peer-to-Peer Data Availability Sampling). While this may sound highly technical, its real-world implications are profound. Fusaka will make it easier, cheaper, and more inclusive to run a validator—without compromising the integrity or availability of Ethereum’s data layer.

Where Is The Capital in Crypto? A Look at App Capital, a Durable Metric of Blockchain Adoption

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 08:30:33 +0000

Defining App Capital

App Capital can be thought of as the economic mass of a blockchain’s application layer. It measures the sum of all circulating market capitalizations of tokens built on a chain, explicitly excluding the chain’s native token. This distinction is critical: by removing the reflexivity of native token valuations, App Capital provides a purer lens into how much real user capital is entrusted to applications on that chain.

Understanding SCOPE: Synchronous Composability Protocol for Ethereum

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 15:36:38 +0000

What Is SCOPE?

SCOPE, short for the Synchronous Composability Protocol for Ethereum, is a proposed minimalist, push-based protocol that enables smart contracts on Ethereum’s mainnet (L1) and its rollups (L2s, L3s) to call each other synchronously and atomically—just like contracts on the same single chain would. This includes L1 ↔ L2 and L2 ↔ L2 interactions, all wrapped into one atomic scope, so the entire operation either completes or fails together. A minimal proof-of-concept has already been published. (Ethereum Research)

Ethereum Platform vs. ETH the Digital Asset: Understanding the Distinction

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:34:54 +0000

Ethereum is often referred to as a unified entity in headlines and casual conversation. Still, in reality, it encompasses two distinct components: Ethereum the platform (or protocol), and ETH the digital asset (or native token). While deeply intertwined, these two elements serve different purposes and must be understood separately to appreciate Ethereum’s full economic, technological, and strategic potential. This note unpacks the key differences between Ethereum and ETH, outlining their roles, relationships, and significance in the blockchain ecosystem.

Understanding EIP-7732: Parallelization and Deterministic Execution in Ethereum

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 10:09:27 +0000

EIP-7732 proposes a significant architectural change to Ethereum by decoupling transaction ordering from execution to enable safe, deterministic parallel execution. Today, Ethereum processes transactions sequentially, limiting scalability. EIP-7732 introduces a new role—the SKR prover—who, after the block is built and transactions are ordered, commits to a valid execution trace. This allows validators to re-execute transactions in parallel, drastically improving performance while maintaining consensus integrity.

The proposal aligns with Ethereum’s broader modular design goals and complements Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS). It supports rollup scalability by ensuring deterministic transaction ordering, reduces MEV-related risks, and enhances validator efficiency. Long-term, it also lays the groundwork for execution sharding.

Web3SOC: A Transparency Framework for Ethereum’s Institutional Maturity

Sat, 21 Jun 2025 11:25:32 +0000

As decentralized finance (DeFi) matures and Ethereum continues to lead as the default settlement layer for on-chain applications, the ecosystem faces an urgent need for better transparency, operational clarity, and governance standards. The lack of consistent disclosures around smart contract upgradeability, key management, and treasury control could present a major hurdle for institutional adoption and user trust. To address this, leading Ethereum ecosystem builders have launched Web3SOC (Web3 System and Organizational Controls) — a standardized framework inspired by traditional SOC audit practices but tailored for decentralized systems.

The Ethereum Way: What Are Ethereum’s Core Values? – EMRC

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 18:00:16 +0000

Ethereum is more than a blockchain protocol, it is a living ecosystem governed by a distinct set of values. These values shape Ethereum’s culture, its community’s behavior, and its strategic trajectory as the world’s most credibly neutral settlement layer. Below are 10 core values that define Ethereum’s ethos across its technical design, community norms, developer incentives, and institutional appeal.

1. Credible Neutrality

Ethereum is built to be an impartial infrastructure, free from centralized control, favoritism, or coercion. This foundational value ensures Ethereum can serve as a trustless global platform for any actor: individual, enterprise, or nation-state. Neutrality enables Ethereum to be the internet’s financial base layer with confidence in fairness and permanence.

Touring the Ethereum World in 102 Advanced Dashboards

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 17:42:33 +0000

A Summary of 102 Ethereum Dashboards Across the Ecosystem

The Ethereum ecosystem thrives on transparency and innovation, as displayed by a diverse array of dashboards that provide critical insights into its infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi), staking, tokenization capabilities, scaling, transactions, and more.[

Below, we highlight 102 curated dashboards from Ethereum Dashboards](https://ethereumdashboards.com/), maintained and curated by Ethereum developer Hanniabu. These tools offer unique data and visualizations to empower users, developers, and stakeholders to follow the particular area of interest. Below, we summarize each dashboard’s functionality, highlighting how they each contribute to highlighting Ethereum’s vibrant ecosystem.

Ethereum INTEROPERABILITY: Connecting the L1, L2s and Beyond – EMRC

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 21:08:48 +0000

Ethereum continues to advance its transformation, moving towards a modular architecture designed for global scalability. Central to this evolution is the imperative of interoperability, particularly between the Ethereum Layer 1 (L1), its burgeoning ecosystem of Layer 2 (L2) solutions, and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) environment in general. This report explores Ethereum’s current diversity, examines the concerted efforts by the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and key industry players to foster seamless connectivity, and outlines the strategic long-term benefits of these initiatives for the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

Comparing Ethereum’s MEV-Boost Model to Jito-Solana- EMRC Research Note

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 03:56:25 +0000

How blockchain networks manage Miner/Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) is more than technical nuances. A comparison reveals deep philosophical, economic, and political distinctions about whom these systems are built to serve. Ethereum and Solana have developed fundamentally different MEV architectures: Ethereum’s modular and permissionless MEV-Boost model and Solana’s vertically integrated Jito ecosystem. Both offer trade-offs, but their implications for decentralization, economic power concentration, and long-term resiliency diverge dramatically.

This research note compares the two models at a high level, focusing on the decentralization of infrastructure, control over transaction flow, user exposure, validator incentives, and systemic resilience. It argues that while Solana’s Jito-driven model currently offers efficiency and convenience, Ethereum’s MEV-Boost architecture provides a more future-proof, pluralistic, and censorship-resistant foundation, especially in a world where policy and public scrutiny of blockchain fairness and neutrality are intensifying.

Ethereum’s Fusaka Upgrade: Advancing Scalability, Efficiency, and Validator Coordination – EMRC

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 23:43:04 +0000

Ethereum, the world’s leading smart contract platform, is poised for a significant transformation with its upcoming Fusaka upgrade, anticipated in late 2025. Building upon the foundations laid by previous upgrades like Pectra, Fusaka aims to address critical challenges in scalability, efficiency, and validator coordination. This research note delves into the key components of the Fusaka upgrade, exploring their implications for Ethereum’s future in the competitive blockchain landscape.

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Understanding FOCIL – EMRC

Fri, 30 May 2025 03:22:11 +0000

FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) is a proposed Ethereum upgrade (EIP-7805) that enhances censorship resistance by requiring validators to enforce the inclusion of valid transactions. It counters the growing centralization of block builders by enabling randomly selected validator committees to publish inclusion lists that proposers must honor, or risk block rejection. This ensures fair transaction processing and upholds Ethereum’s neutrality. Currently under development and testing across major clients, FOCIL is expected to be a candidate for Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade in 2026. If implemented, it will strengthen Ethereum’s core values of openness, decentralization, and trust in high-value, censorship-resistant infrastructure.

PeerDAS: Ethereum’s Data Availability Breakthrough – EMRC

Thu, 29 May 2025 23:00:15 +0000

PeerDAS (Peer-to-Peer Data Availability Sampling) represents a major advancement in Ethereum’s ongoing scalability roadmap. It enables decentralized nodes, including lightweight clients, to verify that block data is available without downloading the entire dataset. This innovation addresses one of Ethereum’s most pressing bottlenecks: scalable and secure data availability. As Ethereum scales through rollups and Layer 2s, PeerDAS provides a trustless and bandwidth-efficient mechanism to ensure that the data behind each block can be retrieved by the network. PeerDAS sets the stage for full Danksharding and transforms Ethereum into a truly modular blockchain, strengthening its competitiveness against high-throughput monolithic chains like Solana and Sui.

Understanding the PECTRA Upgrade – EMRC

Sat, 24 May 2025 03:44:35 +0000

On May 7, 2025, Ethereum implemented the Pectra upgrade, its most significant overhaul since the 2022 Merge. This upgrade amalgamated the Prague (execution layer) and Electra (consensus layer) enhancements, introducing 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) aimed at bolstering scalability, user experience, and validator operations. Key features include advanced account abstraction via EIP-7702, increased validator staking limits through EIP-7251, and improved data throughput with EIP-7691. These developments position Ethereum to better compete with emerging Layer 1 platforms and support the growing Layer 2 ecosystem.

More Than a Blockchain: The Enterprise-Grade Protocol with Consumer-Scale Trust – EMRC

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 03:51:57 +0000

Ethereum is the core infrastructure of Web3, transcending the definition of a mere blockchain. This primer highlights its unique strengths: an infinitely scalable architecture through a modular Layer 2 ecosystem, a decentralized and robust governance model fostering continuous innovation, and growing institutional trust evidenced by its adoption in digital finance and tokenized assets. The platform benefits from the largest and most engaged developer community, driving its evolution. Furthermore, its native asset, ETH, is evolving into “ultrasound money” with deflationary properties. Ethereum’s integration of zero-knowledge technology provides a cutting-edge advantage in privacy and scalability. Finally, its uninterrupted uptime positions it as a reliable settlement layer, solidifying its role as the foundational financial operating system for the internet.