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Over the past few years, most Ethereum upgrades have shared one relatively clear objective: scaling.From rollups, blobs, and data availability to repeated increases in the gas limit, the discussion has centered on how Ethereum can process more transactions at lower cost. Even users who do not understand every EIP can still see the basic purpose of these upgrades: making the network faster and cheaper.More recently, however, Ethereum has increasingly turned to issues that markets find harder to price. On July 4, drawing on an updated long-term roadmap for Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin restated the core direction of Lean Ethereum and described it as Ethereum’s “third major iteration” after The Merge.Meanwhile, another study of 0x02 compounding validators adds a complementary perspective from staking returns: for smaller stakers, native compounding could produce a relative increase of about 5% in consensus-layer APR.At first glance, these may seem like separate topics. Taken together, however, they point to a deeper reconstruction of Ethereum’s narrative: how can a more decentralized organizational structure, a more easily verifiable protocol, and a more sustainable yield model keep Ethereum running for the next decade and beyond?1. From a Single Foundation to Multiple Centers of ResponsibilityFor years, outside observers tended to equate the Ethereum Foundation, or EF, with Ethereum itself.Whether the issue was protocol upgrades, research priorities, ecosystem funding, or external communication, many discussions ultimately came down to one question: what will EF do?But EF is not a conventional company. It has no shareholders in the traditional sense, does not pursue market share or quarterly profit, and does not actually own the Ethereum network. This has always created an inherent tension.On the one hand, Ethereum needs sustained investment in protocol R&D, upgrade coordination, and public-goods development. On the other hand, if research, funding, talent, and decision-making become increasingly concentrated within the Foundation, EF itself could become Ethereum’s greatest centralization risk.Recent organizational changes appear intended to break with this perception. In its latest restructuring, EF cut its headcount by about 20% and refocused its internal work on the protocol, users, and institutions. In EF’s own words, the aim is to become “leaner and more focused,” prioritizing the core responsibilities that only the Foundation can—and must—take on.At the same time, some capabilities once concentrated within EF are beginning to move to independent external organizations. As discussed in our previous article, “Beyond the Ethereum Foundation: Is Ethereum Quietly Redistributing Power?”:On June 22, five former core researchers at EF announced the launch of Ethlabs, an independently operated nonprofit R&D lab taking on protocol research, infrastructure, and institutional-grade technical needs.On July 1, another independent nonprofit, Ethereum Institutional, officially launched, taking over the institutional partnership work previously handled by EF’s business development team and serving as an independent point of contact for traditional financial institutions entering the Ethereum ecosystem.Together, the two organizations create a new division of labor between technical R&D and institutional adoption. They also signal Ethereum’s attempt to distribute research, ecosystem, and market functions once concentrated within a single organization across several relatively independent centers of responsibility: EF focuses more closely on the base protocol and self-sovereignty; Ethlabs advances long-term R&D; Ethereum Institutional handles institutional engagement; and other organizations continue to take on education, developer support, and application adoption.From an organizational perspective, this model will undoubtedly increase coordination costs. Different institutions have different funding sources, priorities, and operating rhythms, and disagreements over direction—or even competition for resources—may emerge.On the other hand, a decentralized protocol that depends on a single foundation to perform nearly all of its critical work also carries a structural risk.The real question raised by Ethereum’s organizational changes is not “Who will replace EF?” but whether Ethereum can build a collaborative structure in which other organizations can continue carrying out critical work even if one participant scales back, changes direction, or disappears entirely.This organizational “subtraction” also foreshadows the protocol-level shift that follows.2. A Shift in the Technical Narrative: What Is Lean Ethereum Actually Trying to Do?Strictly speaking, Lean Ethereum was not introduced last week.Back in July 2025, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake published a ten-year vision for “lean Ethereum,” outlining Lean Consensus, Lean Execution, and Lean Data. Its goals included scaling the base layer to 10,000 transactions per second and Layer 2 networks to 10 million, while preserving decentralization and 100% uptime.The vision already called for major upgrades across Ethereum’s consensus, data, and execution layers, including Beacon Chain 2.0, post-quantum blobs 2.0, and a possible EVM 2.0 built on the open-source RISC-V instruction set. Its cryptography would rely entirely on hash-based signatures, hash-based data commitments, and native hash-based zero-knowledge virtual machines to achieve quantum resistance.What changed this week is that Vitalik, drawing on the latest strawmap, elevated these separate research directions into a more explicit roadmap. Lean Ethereum is not a single hard fork, but a series of changes to be rolled out over the next three to four years—what he calls Ethereum’s “third major iteration.”In Vitalik’s summary, Lean Ethereum touches nearly every core part of the protocol and can be grouped into four main areas:Protocol simplification—from heavy execution to lightweight verification: Recursive STARKs would become a native core primitive, with proof verification replacing direct transaction re-execution. Client architecture, the state model, and multidimensional gas would be redesigned accordingly, making the protocol leaner and easier to verify formally.Post-quantum security first: Quantum security is being moved from a distant concern to an immediate priority. Cryptographic components vulnerable to quantum computing would gradually be replaced with quantum-resistant alternatives, while quantum-secure blob design has been designated an urgent task.Privacy as a first-class protocol goal: Privacy would no longer be treated as an application-layer add-on or an after-the-fact patch, but as a native protocol capability. New designs for Frames, the mempool, and the state tree would support quantum-secure private transactions without intermediaries.Decoupling block availability from finality: At the consensus layer, the goal is to achieve finality within seconds—after one or two rounds of voting—while substantially reducing the burden on validators and light clients through a redesigned state model combining dynamic state with new scalable state types.These directions may appear broad and complex, but they share one underlying logic: concentrate computation and complexity among a small number of proof-generating nodes, while allowing many more participants to verify the results at low cost.At its core, Ethereum is no longer treating “short-term TPS” or “Layer 2 compatibility” as its sole narrative. It is reasserting the protocol’s role as long-term trusted infrastructure—verifiable, censorship-resistant, quantum-resistant, privacy-friendly, and lightweight to validate. Over the next decade, this marks a sweeping turn from “engineering iteration” back toward first principles.Seen in this context, 0x02 compounding validators reflect the same long-term perspective.Historically, discussions of ETH staking have focused mainly on APR and compounded returns through DeFi. Under the conventional 0x01 model, however, each validator’s effective balance is capped at 32 ETH. Consensus-layer rewards above that amount are periodically withdrawn and stop earning staking rewards.For smaller stakers running only one or a few validators, rewards must accumulate to another 32 ETH before they can activate a new validator and begin earning on that capital again. This puts them at a built-in compounding disadvantage, while large staking providers can pool rewards across many validators and activate new ones much more quickly.Pectra therefore introduced the 0x02 model, raising a validator’s maximum effective balance to 2,048 ETH and allowing rewards above 32 ETH to compound in 1 ETH increments. This lowers the compounding threshold for smaller stakers, narrows the capital-efficiency gap between participants of different sizes, and reduces redundant validators and their operational burden on the network.This does not, of course, automatically mean that validators become more decentralized. More precisely, 0x02 improves validator-set efficiency at the protocol level while also improving capital efficiency and placing smaller stakers on more equal footing. Participants of all sizes can earn protocol-native returns with less friction.This aligns closely with Lean Ethereum. Both emphasize the same goal: sustaining an Ethereum network that can operate over the long term with less redundancy and friction.3. What Kind of Ethereum Should We Expect in the Next Decade?From EF downsizing and independent organizations such as Ethlabs and Ethereum Institutional emerging, to Lean Ethereum shifting the focus from scaling toward protocol simplification, quantum resistance, privacy, and lightweight verification, and to 0x02 validators turning periodically withdrawn rewards into native yield that can compound continuously—these developments are not isolated from one another.They all follow the same logic of subtraction: reducing Ethereum’s dependence on any single organization, lowering the cost for ordinary participants to verify the protocol, and cutting idle capital and redundant overhead in the staking process.The hoped-for result is a more distributed system of responsibility, a base protocol that is easier to verify independently, and a yield structure better suited to long-term holders and participants who help secure the network.These changes are unlikely to serve as an immediate price catalyst.After all, Lean Ethereum will take three to four years—or perhaps longer—to roll out. The new organizational structure must show that coordination among multiple centers will not lead to strategic fragmentation. The compounding benefits of 0x02 validators will also need a full cycle to become clear.But what Ethereum truly needs to prove in its next phase may never have been simply how many more upgrades it can ship.More important is whether, as the value secured by the protocol grows and the external environment becomes more complex, Ethereum can depend less on any single organization, become easier to verify on consumer hardware, and provide more stable, sustainable long-term returns to the capital that secures the network.“Lean” does not mean making Ethereum smaller. It means putting back at the center of the protocol what Ethereum truly needs to preserve for the decades ahead.

This past June, the crypto world experienced a wave of security incidents spanning multiple parts of the ecosystem.According to PeckShield’s latest monthly security report, 40 major hacks occurred in June, causing total losses of $75.87 million. More concerningly, the attacks were not limited to a single vector. They spanned flaws in wallet signing implementations, vulnerabilities in L2 protocols, and supply chain attacks involving third-party services, with multiple layers of defense failing in the same month.As Web3 security risks expand from isolated attack vectors to the entire on-chain interaction journey, every user must reconsider one fundamental question: Are my crypto assets truly secure?1. Beyond Private Keys: Why a Wallet’s Signing Implementation MattersThe security incident involving SecondFi, a wallet in the Cardano ecosystem, is one of the clearest examples.SecondFi evolved from Yoroi, another wallet in the Cardano ecosystem. Between June 21 and 23, attackers moved approximately 16 million ADA out of addresses belonging to some SecondFi users. Around 374 wallets were affected, representing roughly $2.4 million at the time. SecondFi later said that emergency measures had secured another 129 million ADA that might otherwise have been at risk.What makes this incident particularly notable is that the affected users never handed their mnemonic phrases to the attackers. The problem lay in the wallet’s underlying signing implementation.According to BlockSec, it incorrectly derived the signing nonce from public transaction messages and omitted the secret nonce prefix required by the relevant cryptographic standard.As a result, whenever a user signed a transaction with an affected wallet version, the public signature data posted on-chain could expose enough information to derive the private key corresponding to that address. Attackers did not need to compromise the user’s phone or obtain the mnemonic phrase; analyzing public on-chain data alone could be enough to recover the key.From the user’s perspective, the wallet still appeared to function normally: no pop-up had exposed the mnemonic phrase, the password had not been cracked, and the transactions had genuinely been initiated by the user.Cryptographically, however, once an address had generated valid signatures using an affected wallet version, the public transaction and signature data could help an attacker derive the corresponding private key.Ultimately, wallet security also depends on whether private keys are generated correctly, whether signatures strictly follow cryptographic standards, and whether the critical code can be independently reviewed and verified. This is precisely why open-sourcing core wallet components matters.Of course, this was an implementation flaw in a specific version of a particular wallet, not a problem common to all self-custodial wallets.For example, the repositories for imToken’s TokenCore are publicly available on GitHub and cover foundational wallet functions such as key management, address derivation, and transaction signing.Open-source code does not guarantee the absence of vulnerabilities, nor does it mean users can stop being vigilant. For a wallet’s most sensitive cryptographic and signing components, however, open source provides an essential foundation: researchers, developers, and community members can inspect the code, reproduce issues, and test it continuously instead of having to trust an unverifiable black box.For users, incidents like this also highlight several practical security principles. First, always download wallet apps from official websites or official app stores, and install security updates promptly. Second, avoid keeping all your assets in a single wallet used for everyday interactions. Large, long-term holdings can be stored in a hardware wallet or a separate cold wallet and kept apart from the hot wallet you regularly connect to DApps. More importantly, once a wallet provider confirms a flaw in how keys are generated or transactions are signed, simply importing the original mnemonic phrase into another wallet does not solve the problem. Importing the same mnemonic phrase into another wallet does not change any addresses or private keys that may already have been exposed. The affected assets need to be moved to a new address that has never signed a transaction with the vulnerable wallet version.For most users, the safer approach is to follow the provider’s official incident-response instructions, create an entirely new wallet with a new mnemonic phrase, and migrate the assets there, rather than repeatedly importing or continuing to use the affected addresses.2. L2s Are More Than “Cheaper Ethereum”—They Rely on Complex Chains of TrustBeyond wallets, several incidents in June also highlighted the risks within increasingly complex L2 systems.On June 14 and 18, two legacy rollup deployments associated with Aztec were attacked, resulting in combined losses of approximately $4.35 million.It is important to clarify that the affected systems were legacy deployments such as Aztec Connect, not the Aztec Network mainnet itself. Even so, the flaws exposed by the two incidents serve as an important warning for the broader ZK rollup ecosystem.In one incident, the attacker exploited a mismatch between the declared transaction count and the data actually processed. This caused the proof to record a deposit without the corresponding balance being deducted on L1.The other incident stemmed from missing constraints in a zero-knowledge proof circuit. The system accepted a formally valid proof without ensuring that the private state tree used in the proof matched the public state root used for settlement on Ethereum.The attacker could therefore generate a proof based on a fabricated state tree and withdraw assets from the L1 contract.Problems like these cannot be reduced to the traditional question of whether one particular line of smart contract code is vulnerable. A zero-knowledge proof can show that a computation followed a predefined set of rules, but only if those rules are themselves correct and complete.If a critical variable is left unconstrained, the proof may remain mathematically valid while proving a result that does not match the actual settlement state.A subsequent security incident involving Taiko exposed another form of risk in the L2 trust chain.On June 22, Taiko’s SGX-based proof-verification process was exploited, causing approximately $1.7 million in losses. According to BlockSec, the attacker used an SGX enclave signing key that had previously been checked into a public GitHub repository.The attacker also took advantage of an on-chain verification flaw that failed to reject enclaves running in DEBUG mode, allowing a malicious prover to register as a legitimate instance.The attacker then forged an L2 state proof, causing an Ethereum contract to accept an L2 state that did not actually exist and ultimately enabling unauthorized withdrawals from the bridge.At its core, the incident occurred because the key used to sign the trusted enclave had been publicly exposed, while the remote-attestation rules did not fully verify the environment’s runtime properties. A proof that had technically “passed attestation” therefore no longer carried the trust that the attestation was meant to provide.Meanwhile, Base experienced two mainnet block-production stalls on June 25 and 26.In its post-incident review, Base said both outages stemmed from the same flaw in its block-building logic: a transaction that failed during execution did not properly clear previously recorded state, causing gas for subsequent transactions to be calculated incorrectly and producing a block with an invalid state transition.Because other nodes could not accept the block, the network stopped progressing. Base said chain integrity was not compromised and user funds remained safe throughout the incidents.This was not an asset theft or an external attack, but a technical failure affecting network availability and recoverability. From a broader security perspective, availability is itself part of an L2’s security model.For users, a network’s security depends not only on whether attackers can forge assets or state, but also on whether blocks continue to be produced, bridges remain operational, nodes recover quickly, and users retain a viable exit path when the system fails.Users should therefore look beyond fees and potential airdrops when evaluating an L2.On smaller or newly launched L2s, or networks whose security mechanisms are still changing rapidly, avoid leaving more assets on-chain than you actually need.Before bridging, confirm that you are using the official bridge and understand the withdrawal period, pause mechanisms, and emergency exit options.If block production stops, bridge transactions behave unexpectedly, or the project issues a security alert, do not repeatedly resubmit transactions or continue moving assets across the bridge.A safer approach is to manage assets separately according to their purpose and risk level, rather than concentrating all your liquidity on a single L2, bridge, or exit mechanism.3. Even If the Contract Is Secure, Third-Party Services Can Still Expose Users to AttacksWhile the wallet and L2 incidents involved relatively low-level technical components, the Polymarket incident showed that the web front end closest to users can also become an attack vector targeting their funds.On June 25, Polymarket said that one of its third-party service providers had been compromised, allowing the attacker to inject malicious scripts into the version of the Polymarket front end served to some users.According to estimates from security firms and on-chain analysts, the incident caused approximately $3 million in user losses and affected around 11 wallets.The stolen funds were later bridged from Polygon to Ethereum and swapped for approximately 1,893 ETH. Polymarket subsequently said it had removed the affected dependency and would fully reimburse affected users.The key point is that affected users may still have been visiting the legitimate Polymarket domain,while public disclosures did not indicate any vulnerability in Polymarket’s core smart contracts. The problem lay primarily in a third-party front-end dependency loaded by the website.This incident reflects a broader reality: most Web3 applications do not operate entirely on-chain.The websites users interact with, including trading interfaces, still rely heavily on traditional internet infrastructure and third-party software packages. If any of these dependencies is compromised, a legitimate website may display false information, replace recipient addresses, or trick users into signing malicious transactions through their wallets.A legitimate URL does not necessarily mean that every piece of code currently loaded by the page is safe. Likewise, an audited smart contract does not mean that the entire interaction path between the user and the contract is risk-free.Users cannot realistically inspect every piece of code a webpage loads, but they can limit potential losses by reducing the permissions granted in each interaction and limiting the assets exposed to it.Use a separate wallet for DApp interactions. Avoid connecting wallets that hold long-term assets directly to DeFi, NFT, prediction-market, or airdrop websites. Keep only the funds you expect to use in the near term in your everyday interaction wallet. This limits the potential impact if a front end is compromised or a malicious approval is granted.Verify the action shown in your wallet, not just the button displayed on the webpage. A webpage may say “Log in,” “Claim,” or “Confirm Order,” but the signature request in your wallet may authorize something entirely different.Stop when a webpage behaves unexpectedly instead of continuing out of habit. If a page suddenly asks you to import your mnemonic phrase again, install an additional extension, or sign a transaction whose details do not match the action described on the website, stop interacting. Check the project’s status through multiple official channels, and review or revoke any old token approvals you no longer use.From a product perspective, this also means the role of wallets is changing.A wallet should do more than store private keys and display signature prompts. It should help users understand transaction intent, identify suspicious approvals, show expected asset changes, and provide clear warnings before high-risk interactions occur.However, wallets cannot eliminate every risk for users.A more realistic security model requires wallets, protocols, L2s, third-party service providers, and users to work together to reduce the attack surface, rather than placing all responsibility on any one party.Final ThoughtsPeople often say that whoever controls the private keys controls the on-chain assets.That remains true, but it does not cover the entire journey from initiating an on-chain action to reaching final settlement.Web3 security today is no longer just about protecting a mnemonic phrase. It means protecting the full path—from how a wallet generates keys and presents transaction details to how signatures are executed, networks verify state, and transactions reach final settlement.This does not mean users need to avoid all on-chain interactions. Effective security habits mean managing assets separately based on their purpose, risk level, and how they are used: keep long-term holdings isolated, limit the funds kept in everyday interaction wallets, grant minimal permissions to unfamiliar DApps, and double-check high-risk actions.After all, when security risks expand from a single point to an entire chain, users’ defenses must also evolve—from protecting private keys alone to building a complete set of security practices.

Imagine a future in which all you need to tell an AI agent is:“Use half of the available funds in my wallet to buy more ETH.”The agent immediately begins checking your balance, searching across liquidity pools, comparing quotes, and building an execution route. A few dozen seconds later, it sends you a message:“I found a suitable route. Confirm?”You reply with a simple “Yes.”But what exactly have you approved?Which pool did the agent choose? What execution price and slippage should you expect? Which protocol will it interact with? Which wallet will it use, and how much will it spend? Does the operation involve token approvals or any other actions?You have not actually seen any of this information. You are simply choosing to trust the agent’s summary.This is a new category of risk emerging as AI agents move from answering questions to acting on behalf of users.Agents can now browse websites, log in to accounts, complete payments, and even initiate or sign on-chain transactions. Yet the final authorization step presented to users is often still little more than a vague chat message and a confirmation option containing almost no meaningful information.A single “Yes” can determine what happens to a user’s funds, data, and devices.This is why imToken’s latest brand evolution introduces a fourth S alongside Store, Send, and Stake: Sign.If the first three pillars correspond to asset custody, value transfer, and network participation, Sign addresses a new question: as more software begins acting on behalf of users, how can users retain the right to understand, approve, and remain in control?Sigil is the first proof-of-concept product built around this Sign vision.Its core principle is simple but important:What you see is what you sign.1. When Agents Start Acting, Why Do Wallets Need to Rethink Signing?Historically, many signing risks in crypto wallets have stemmed from users not understanding what they were signing.At the protocol level, an on-chain transaction may appear only as a contract address, function parameters, and hexadecimal data. For ordinary users, it can be extremely difficult to determine whether the request represents a transfer, a swap, or a more dangerous asset operation.That is why wallets need to translate raw transaction data into human-readable details that users can review before signing.Clear signing, also known as “what you see is what you sign,” is designed to bridge the gap between machine-readable data and human understanding.Further reading: Why Clear Signing Is Becoming Essential in the AI Era.AI agents, however, make the problem more complex.Users may no longer be authorizing a single on-chain transaction. Instead, they may be authorizing an entire chain of actions planned and executed by an agent.To complete a goal such as “use half of my available liquid funds to buy more ETH,” an agent may need to check wallet balances, search on-chain liquidity pools, call third-party tools, run scripts, and prepare a transaction.Users cannot realistically inspect every underlying request one by one. Yet before any assets are exchanged, they still need to make the final decision.Many agents today handle authorization by sending a short message in a chat window and waiting for the user to reply “Yes” or “Confirm,” or to tap a standard confirmation button.This may resemble user authorization, but in practice it creates several obvious problems.First, it is a black box.Users know they are approving something, but they may not know the exact amount, recipient, protocol, or action the agent will ultimately execute on their behalf.The real execution parameters are hidden behind a highly summarized natural-language sentence. The user is confirming only a vague intent, not the exact action the system is about to perform.Second, a chat reply is not equivalent to a digital signature.Anyone with access to an already authenticated device or session may be able to type “Yes.” At most, the system can verify that the message came from an authenticated account or session. It cannot necessarily confirm that the approval was intentionally provided by the account owner.More importantly, the confirmation interface itself may also be manipulated.If the same agent that initiates an operation also controls how that operation is presented to the user, it could omit key parameters, use ambiguous wording, or display something that appears harmless while submitting a different request in the background.This creates a clear trust paradox.We want the confirmation interface to constrain the agent, yet we may also allow the agent itself to determine what the user sees at the moment of confirmation.When an agent is only summarizing articles or organizing information, this lack of transparency may result in an inaccurate answer.But when an agent gains access to accounts, funds, file systems, and terminal environments, vague approval can lead to real asset loss, data leakage, or device-level risk.Further reading: A Signature Is More Than a Signature: When an AI Agent Signs for You, Who’s in Control?What agent-based systems need is not more “Yes” buttons.They need an authorization mechanism that can create a verifiable link between what the user saw, what the user approved, and what the system ultimately executed.2. Sigil: A Signing Guardrail Between AI Agents and WalletsThis is the problem Sigil, imToken’s newly introduced proof of concept, is designed to address.Sigil acts as a safety guardrail between AI agents and wallets.It does not seek to prevent agents from automating tasks altogether.Instead, during setup, users can explicitly authorize an agent and define which low-risk actions it may complete autonomously and which sensitive actions require separate, explicit, and verifiable user approval.Within the boundaries defined by the user, the agent can continue operating efficiently.But when an operation involves something the user has classified as sensitive—particularly spending funds or authorizing on-chain transactions—Sigil pauses the flow, parses the actual request into a structured confirmation card, and delivers it to the user through Telegram.The user must then approve the request using a passkey and biometric verification before the operation can continue.The flow can be summarized in four steps.Step 1: The agent initiates an actionThe agent continues its task, whether that involves browsing websites, booking services, sending requests, or preparing a transaction.Step 2: Sigil checks the user’s security policySigil determines whether the action triggers the user’s preconfigured security policy.If the action is classified as low risk and the user has allowed the agent to complete it autonomously, the flow can continue.If it involves actions such as sending messages, deleting files, executing code, spending funds, or authorizing on-chain transactions, Sigil pauses execution and parses the request.Step 3: The user reviews and approves the requestA structured confirmation card is delivered through Telegram.Depending on the operation, the card may display key parameters such as the action type, merchant, protocol, asset, amount, recipient, and other relevant details.The confirmation is not based solely on a natural-language summary generated by the agent. It is based on structured information parsed from the actual request.The user then provides explicit approval using a passkey and biometric verification.Step 4: Sigil verifies the approvalOnly after the Sigil gateway verifies the user’s signature can the agent continue.Without user approval, no funds are moved and no transaction is signed.The key point is not simply that Sigil adds another biometric verification step.More importantly, it establishes a verifiable connection between display, signing, and execution.What is displayed is derived from the actual request.What the user signs is cryptographically bound to the displayed content.What the system executes must match the signed request.If these elements do not match, Sigil blocks the operation.Sigil does not require users to approve every action an agent takes.Instead, it allows users to define in advance which actions may be automated and which require personal approval.Users can select different security levels, such as Relaxed, Balanced, or Strict, or use Custom mode to define rules for individual categories of actions.In Balanced mode, for example, some lower-risk actions may proceed without additional approval, while higher-risk actions involving code execution, terminal access, sensitive data, or asset security must go through Sigil confirmation.Spending funds and authorizing on-chain transactions always require user approval, regardless of the selected security mode.This requirement applies across all security settings.3. From Crypto to AI Agents: What Is Sigil Trying to Protect?Built around the principle of “What you see is what you sign,” Sigil provides three layers of protection.First, users can clearly see what they are approvingIn Sigil’s confirmation card, key parameters such as the protocol, amount, asset, recipient, and action type are presented as structured fields.Users do not need to rely solely on the agent’s summary, nor do they need to interpret raw data they cannot understand.The user’s approval is bound to the content shown on the card.Returning to the ETH transaction at the beginning of this article, the final confirmation should not simply say “Buy ETH.”It should show the asset being spent, the amount, the recipient or contract, the relevant protocol, and the key transaction parameters the user needs in order to make an informed decision.The same principle applies to real-world payments.The interface should not merely display “Confirm payment.” It should clearly show the merchant, amount, recipient, and other relevant details.The more closely the displayed information reflects the actual operation, the more meaningful the user’s authorization becomes.Second, approval requires the user’s registered authentication methodSigil uses a passkey as the authentication mechanism for approvals and verifies the request through device biometrics.This means that even if someone gains access to a device already logged in to Telegram and can view the confirmation message, they cannot complete approval simply by typing a sentence or tapping an ordinary button.Approval is tied to the user’s registered passkey and biometric verification, not merely to whoever has access to the active device or messaging session.Sigil also adopts a mnemonic-free design.Users do not need to store or enter a new mnemonic phrase, nor do they need to expose their wallet private key to the agent.The ability to approve requests remains controlled through the user’s passkey and biometric verification.Third, the confirmation interface is independent of the agentSigil’s confirmation page is not an ordinary message dynamically generated and controlled by the agent.It is a separately registered module whose rendering logic is anchored on-chain and executed in a sandboxed environment.This means that after initiating a sensitive operation, the agent cannot simply replace the page, alter its display logic, or imitate the confirmation interface in order to mislead the user.The party initiating the request no longer controls how that request is presented for approval.Sigil also uses mechanisms such as single-use approvals, short validity periods, and cryptographic binding between the signature and the request parameters.These mechanisms help ensure that the content displayed in the confirmation card corresponds to the request awaiting execution.An approval cannot be reused indefinitely, and the underlying request parameters cannot be altered after approval without invalidating the signature.If the previewed content does not match the request submitted for execution, the operation is blocked.Seen in this context, Sigil is not merely another wallet feature.It is imToken’s product-level exploration of the Sign vision and addresses a more fundamental question:When agents begin to act, how can we ensure that they continue operating only within the boundaries users have authorized?In crypto, this need is especially intuitive.On-chain agents may eventually help users manage recurring purchases, yield strategies, transaction fees, position adjustments, risk monitoring, and automated execution across multiple protocols based on predefined conditions.In that environment, one question becomes increasingly important:If an agent’s behavior deviates from the user’s expectations, can it be stopped immediately?At the same time, Sigil’s relevance is not limited to crypto.Whether through OpenClaw, Hermes, or future agents running on personal devices and in cloud environments, agents are gradually gaining access to email, messaging apps, calendars, files, browsers, terminals, payment tools, and a growing range of online services.These operations may not take place on-chain, but the underlying relationship is fundamentally similar.The agent is exercising a capability owned by the user and acting under the user’s identity or authority.Sigil could therefore extend beyond on-chain transactions into areas such as data access, identity use, file modification, content publishing, service purchases, and automated workflows.This also explains why capabilities developed by the wallet industry may take on new significance in the AI agent era.Private key management, digital signatures, identity verification, permission confirmation, and asset security were once used primarily for on-chain transactions.But the more fundamental problem they have always addressed is how to prove that an action was genuinely authorized by a specific user or entity.As agents begin acting on behalf of users at scale, these capabilities may expand from the crypto world into broader infrastructure for managing agent identities, automated actions, and machine permissions.As a joint exploration by imToken and OpenClaw, Sigil applies imToken’s ten years of experience in self-custody, wallets, and digital signatures to a new environment in which autonomous agents are beginning to perform real actions.It does not replace the agent.Nor does it replace the wallet.It stands between the two.Closing ThoughtsAI is making complex actions easier and cheaper to execute than ever before.Tasks that once required users to switch between multiple applications, search for information, complete forms, verify details, and make payments may soon be planned and executed automatically by an agent in response to a single natural-language instruction.But being capable of acting on behalf of a user and having received valid authorization from that user are two different things.What determines whether an intelligent system can be trusted is not only how many tasks it can complete.It is whether users can understand what the system is doing, limit its authority, and stop it when necessary.From this perspective, Sign is not merely an additional layer of friction that slows agents down.It may become one of the most important layers of trust required before agents can be safely integrated into financial and real-world services.Store gives users custody of their assets.Send enables value transfer.Stake enables participation in open networks.Sign helps users retain final authority when machines act on their behalf.The value of Sigil lies in turning this abstract question of control into a functional proof of concept that can be tested, validated, and continuously improved.

Ethereum’s next major upgrade is beginning to take shape.According to Ethereum’s official roadmap, Glamsterdam is planned for mainnet activation in the second half of 2026. As of late June, it had entered an advanced stage of devnet testing, with multi-client devnets continuing to test core features such as enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists, and gas repricing. The exact activation date has not yet been finalized.Much of the discussion across major social platforms has focused on the headline claim that Ethereum mainnet could eventually push toward 10,000 transactions per second after the upgrade. But Glamsterdam is about more than throughput. It introduces major changes to Ethereum’s block-production pipeline and execution architecture. Because of the depth and scope of these changes, many developers have described it as the largest Ethereum upgrade since the Merge.So what exactly does Glamsterdam change?The name combines Gloas, the consensus-layer upgrade, with Amsterdam, the execution-layer upgrade. Together, they are intended to address several of Ethereum’s most persistent bottlenecks.What could this mean for Ethereum—and for everyday on-chain users?1. Why Is Glamsterdam Being Called the Largest Upgrade Since the Merge?If Dencun and Fusaka were primarily focused on expanding data availability for Layer 2 networks through blobs, Glamsterdam shifts more attention back to Layer 1 and introduces a broad overhaul of L1 performance and architecture.In many ways, it reflects Ethereum’s renewed protocol-level focus on strengthening L1: allowing the network to process more transactions without simultaneously increasing node operating costs or centralization risks.For everyday users, Ethereum upgrades are often reduced to two questions: will gas become cheaper, and will throughput increase?But Glamsterdam is difficult to summarize as either a simple fee-reduction upgrade or a conventional scaling upgrade.It affects several core components of Ethereum’s architecture, including who builds blocks, how transactions are executed, how nodes access and synchronize state, and how different on-chain operations are priced.In other words, it aims to redesign the way Ethereum produces and processes blocks.Based on the technical details disclosed so far, the most important changes are concentrated in three areas:Enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS: redesigning the relationship between block proposers and builders while reducing reliance on external relays.Block-Level Access Lists, or BALs: giving transaction execution a clearer map of state access in advance, laying the groundwork for more parallelized processing and faster node synchronization.Gas repricing: introducing a more accurate resource-pricing model to limit unsustainable state growth in a higher-throughput environment.Enshrined Proposer-Builder SeparationTo understand ePBS, it helps to know that Ethereum blocks today are not always assembled by proposers themselves.Under the current MEV-Boost architecture, most proposers outsource transaction collection, ordering, and MEV extraction to professional block builders. The proposer mainly selects the highest-paying candidate block and submits it to the network.This division of labor—where the builder assembles the block and the proposer submits it—is known as proposer-builder separation, or PBS.The problem is that the current mechanism is not fully integrated into Ethereum’s base protocol.Proposers and builders still rely on off-protocol third-party software and MEV-Boost relays to handle block bids, payload delivery, and payments.These relays must ensure that builders eventually reveal the full block while also preventing proposers from viewing the block contents in advance and using them without compensating the builder.As a result, relays occupy a centralized and potentially fragile intermediary position.EIP-7732’s ePBS is designed to address this problem by bringing the proposer-builder relationship directly into Ethereum’s consensus protocol.Instead of relying on third-party relays, builders become protocol-native actors. They first submit block commitments and bids, the protocol locks the corresponding payment, and a dedicated Payload Timeliness Committee determines whether the builder revealed the execution payload on time.This separates consensus-layer block processing from execution-payload processing, extending the propagation and processing window for execution payloads from approximately two seconds to around nine seconds.These additional seconds may not sound significant, but they matter for Ethereum scaling.They give nodes more time to receive and process larger blocks and more blob data, creating room for further increases in the gas limit.Block-Level Access ListsAnother major execution-layer proposal in Glamsterdam is EIP-7928, which introduces Block-Level Access Lists.Today, when an Ethereum node receives a block, the block itself does not directly tell the node which accounts each transaction will read from, which storage slots it will access, or which parts of state it will modify.These dependencies are usually discovered during execution.It is similar to entering a large warehouse without a complete inventory map. Workers must discover where each item is stored while carrying out the work itself.To prevent conflicting updates, much of the work must be performed in a strict sequence.Block-Level Access Lists are designed to function like a state-access map attached to each block.They record which addresses and storage slots the block accesses, together with the resulting state changes.With this information, nodes can identify in advance which transactions access the same data and which do not conflict with one another.For non-conflicting operations, nodes can prefetch relevant state from disk and parallelize parts of transaction verification and state-root computation, rather than forcing all work into a strictly serial process.Because BALs also record post-execution state changes, some nodes may be able to use those results when synchronizing or catching up, rather than always re-executing every transaction from scratch.In this sense, BALs introduce some of the benefits associated with sharded or parallelized execution.Over time, they could become an important foundation for raising Ethereum mainnet’s current performance ceiling.Gas RepricingThe third major component is gas repricing, which uses economic incentives to better align gas costs with the actual resources consumed by different on-chain operations.Ethereum’s current gas schedule does not always reflect the real burden that operations place on nodes.For example, computationally intensive operations may impose relatively little long-term burden once execution is complete.By contrast, creating a new account, deploying a smart contract, or writing to a new storage slot creates data that full nodes around the world may need to store permanently.Historically, fees for these state-creating operations have not always fully reflected the long-term storage burden they introduce. This is commonly described as state growth or state bloat.If Ethereum raises the gas limit while preserving the existing pricing model, additional block space could quickly accelerate state growth and place greater pressure on node hardware.EIP-8037, which has been included in the Glamsterdam scope, is intended to overhaul this pricing model.It separates computation and state accounting, recalculates costs based on the amount of newly created state, and distinguishes conventional computation gas from state-related gas.It is also intended to limit rapid state growth.Applications that create large numbers of accounts, deploy redundant contracts, or frequently write new state may face higher costs. Meanwhile, applications that primarily consume computation without continuously expanding state may benefit from a more favorable fee structure.Glamsterdam’s gas reform should therefore not be understood as making every transaction cheaper.Its goal is to distinguish between immediate computation and long-term storage, then charge operations in a way that more closely reflects the actual resources they consume.Taken together, these three components point toward the same broader goal: strengthening Ethereum mainnet’s core infrastructure before significantly increasing capacity.2. Why Not Simply Make Blocks Bigger?A common question is straightforward: if Ethereum is slow and expensive, why not simply increase the gas limit and double block capacity?In theory, raising the amount of gas available per block is the most direct way to increase mainnet throughput.The higher the gas limit, the more transactions and computation each block can contain.But the gas limit cannot be increased indefinitely.If blocks become too large too quickly, they can trigger a chain reaction.Nodes must receive more data, execute more transactions, and calculate a new state within the same time window.If processing cannot keep up, lower-specification nodes are more likely to fall behind. Block propagation and validation may also slow down, increasing the risk of forks and network centralization.At the same time, more transactions can also mean more accounts, contracts, and storage data being written permanently into Ethereum’s database.This data does not disappear once a transaction has been processed. It continues to accumulate in Ethereum’s state database, accelerating state growth over time.Sustainable Ethereum scaling must therefore address three problems at once:First, giving nodes more time to propagate and process larger blocks.Second, reducing the bottlenecks created by sequential execution.Third, preventing additional block space from accelerating unsustainable state growth.This is the core logic behind Glamsterdam.It does not increase capacity first and leave nodes to absorb the consequences.Instead, it redesigns how blocks are produced, how transactions are executed, and how network resources are priced.By improving the underlying processing pipeline, it creates a stronger foundation for higher mainnet capacity.Among these changes, ePBS gives nodes more time to propagate and validate larger blocks by rearranging the processing flow within each slot.BALs improve client efficiency by making state-access relationships explicit.Gas repricing helps limit unsustainable state growth.During coordinated Glamsterdam testing in April 2026, core developers stress-tested multi-client implementations and proposed 200 million gas as a credible lower-bound estimate for post-upgrade capacity.That estimate reflects the combined foundation provided by ePBS, BALs, and state gas repricing.Of course, 200 million gas should be understood as an indication of possible post-upgrade capacity and the direction in which the network could gradually evolve.It does not mean Ethereum mainnet will immediately move to that gas limit on the day Glamsterdam activates.What matters is that Ethereum is shifting from cautious, incremental scaling toward preparing for substantially greater mainnet capacity through deeper architectural redesign.3. How Could Glamsterdam Affect Users and the Ethereum Ecosystem?For everyday users, the most important question remains whether transaction fees will decrease.The answer is nuanced.Fees may fall and become more stable, but not every transaction will immediately become cheaper.Because ePBS and BALs create the conditions for a higher gas limit, each block should eventually be able to include more transactions.If demand remains unchanged, an increase in block-space supply should help reduce congestion and lower the likelihood of sudden base-fee spikes.At the level of individual transactions, however, the effects may vary.A standard ETH transfer may benefit from broader execution and pricing improvements.More predictable state-access information may also help wallets improve gas estimation, reducing some cases in which users submit transactions with insufficient gas while still incurring gas costs.However, operations such as deploying contracts, creating accounts in batches, or writing large amounts of new state may become more expensive under the new state-pricing model.The more likely outcome is therefore that simple transactions become cheaper, fees become more stable during periods of congestion, and state-intensive applications begin paying prices that more accurately reflect the long-term resources they consume.Impact on Layer 2 UsersFor users who primarily interact with Layer 2 networks, Glamsterdam is also relevant.ePBS extends the processing window for execution payloads from approximately two seconds to around nine seconds.This supports not only larger mainnet blocks, but also greater room for processing blob data.As blob capacity continues to expand, rollups may gain more space to submit transaction data, which could help stabilize Layer 2 data costs over time.Clearer ETH Activity RecordsFor wallets, exchanges, and cross-chain bridges, one of the more visible changes could come from EIP-7708.Today, ERC-20 token transfers usually emit standardized Transfer logs. Some native ETH transfers between smart contracts, however, do not produce equivalent standardized event logs.Wallets and exchanges often need to rely on internal transaction tracing to identify these ETH movements.EIP-7708 requires non-zero ETH transfers and operations that burn ETH to generate standardized logs.This could allow wallets, exchanges, and bridges to identify deposits, withdrawals, and internal ETH movements more reliably.Users may eventually see more complete ETH activity records in their wallets, while some internal transfers that currently require complex tracing may become easier to recognize directly.Impact on Node Operators and StakersFor node operators and stakers, the impact will be more direct.Glamsterdam changes block processing at both the execution and consensus layers, so nodes and validators will need to upgrade to client versions that support Glamsterdam before mainnet activation.Ordinary ETH holders will not need to migrate their ETH, upgrade their assets, or perform a token swap.Over the longer term, Glamsterdam’s real significance lies in how Ethereum attempts to balance scaling with decentralization.If higher block capacity leads to sharply higher hardware requirements, throughput may improve while the network becomes increasingly dependent on large institutions and professional infrastructure providers.The combination of ePBS, BALs, and state gas repricing attempts to create a different scaling path.Instead of simply asking nodes to process more work within the same amount of time, Ethereum is rearranging the block-production process, providing transaction dependency information in advance, and pricing different operations according to the computational and storage burden they impose.This is the fundamental difference between Glamsterdam and a simple gas-limit increase.It does not rely on a single EIP to solve Ethereum’s scaling challenges.Instead, it redesigns three interconnected mechanisms at once: block production, transaction execution, and state growth.Closing ThoughtsIn the long run, Glamsterdam’s most important impact may be its role in helping Ethereum find a new balance between higher performance and strong decentralization.This reflects a long-standing Ethereum principle.As high-performance monolithic chains continue to apply pressure, Ethereum is not choosing the simplest path of aggressively increasing hardware requirements.Instead, it is attempting to preserve its decentralized foundation while strengthening the resilience and efficiency of the underlying protocol.That is what Glamsterdam’s combination of changes is ultimately designed to achieve.ePBS restructures the block pipeline.BALs make transaction dependencies more explicit.Gas repricing aligns fees more closely with the computational and storage burden different operations impose.Together, these changes are intended to create substantially greater mainnet capacity while preserving the ability of ordinary participants to run nodes and take part in validation.From this perspective, future reductions in gas costs, clearer ETH activity records in wallets, and greater room for Layer 2 fees to decline may all trace back, at least in part, to the groundwork laid by Glamsterdam.Its significance lies not in any single headline metric, but in the deeper architectural foundation it creates for Ethereum’s next stage of scaling.

Dear imToken users, partners, and friends,Ten years ago, when we started building imToken, there was no clear map of the industry. Blockchain was still in its early days, and crypto wallets had not yet become a mature product category. For most people, private keys, seed phrases, signatures, gas fees, and smart contracts were unfamiliar and difficult concepts. The world did not yet fully understand crypto assets, and few believed that individuals could truly own and control their own value.But we made a choice that later proved to be very important: we chose to build a wallet. We believed that the internet should not only give you accounts; it should also give you assets, identity, and choice. What truly belongs to you should be in your own hands. This is where imToken began.Over the past ten years, we have gone through bull and bear cycles, the rise of DeFi and multi-chain ecosystems, and repeated tests of trust, risk, and long-term thinking together with tens of millions of users. Many things have changed, but one belief has remained the same: imToken has always believed that what truly belongs to you should be under your control.Digital Assets, Under Your Control.This idea sounds simple, but it has been our most important product principle over the past decade. It is also the starting point for where we go next.The First Decade: Store, Send, StakeLooking back on imToken’s first ten years, the core value that wallets created for users can be summarized in three words: Store, Send, and Stake.Store means enabling users to truly hold their own digital assets. Wallets first solved the challenge of self-custody: how to hold assets securely, how to avoid relying on centralized institutions, and how to return final control over value to individuals. Self-custody is not merely a feature; it defines where control resides. It means that assets that truly belong to you do not need to be entrusted to another centralized account.Send means enabling value to move freely. Once users can own assets, the next step is to transfer value freely. Send is not just about making transfers. It is the ability for value to flow across an open network, allowing anyone to move what belongs to them across geographic and institutional boundaries without needing permission.Stake means helping users move from holders to participants. As open networks evolved, wallets became more than tools for storing and transferring assets. They became gateways for users to participate in networks, earn rewards, and support ecosystem operations. From staking to DeFi, from governance to broader forms of on-chain participation, wallets helped users move from “owning assets” to “participating in networks.”Store, Send, and Stake have formed the core product value of imToken’s first decade. Over these ten years, imToken has grown much like a tree. Our mission, vision, values, and long-term principles are the roots of this tree; our products, technology, security, user experience, and services are the branches growing upward. Only deep roots can support flourishing leaves. And the farther we go, the more clearly we understand what must never be lost.The tenth anniversary is not an endpoint. It is a new beginning after looking back. As we stand here today and look toward the next decade, a larger shift is taking place.The Intelligent Age: Abundant Agency, Scarce ControlAI is bringing the internet into a new era. In the future, more and more software will no longer simply wait for people to click buttons. It will understand goals, break down tasks, call tools, and act on behalf of people. We are entering the age of intelligent agents: AI agents will have increasingly powerful agency, enabling them to search, reason, trade, collaborate, pay, and execute in the digital world.This will bring enormous productivity, but it will also create new risks. In the past, the core question of the digital world was: How can people own assets? In the future, an increasingly important question will be: When intelligent agents can act on behalf of people, how can people still remain in control?We see three forces converging. First, AI is sweeping across the world, transforming software from “waiting for human operation” to “acting on behalf of humans.” Second, the value of blockchain is becoming visible again. Permissionlessness, censorship resistance, self-custody, verifiability, and traceability were once foundations of open finance. In an AI-native internet, they will also become important defensive infrastructure for collaboration between humans and intelligent systems. Third, control is becoming a new personal challenge. In the future, every individual will not only manage assets, identity, and data, but also their own AI agents, automated tasks, and authorization boundaries.Agency will become increasingly abundant. What will truly be scarce is control.This is not an abstract issue. In the future, users will need to know: Who can act on my behalf? What are they allowed to do? What is the spending limit? How long does the authorization last? Which actions require my confirmation? When something abnormal happens, how can I pause, revoke, and trace it? Without clear mechanisms of control, intelligent agents may become a new kind of black box. The more powerful they become, the easier it will be for people to lose boundaries, accountability, and final decision-making power.So for imToken, the mission of the next decade is not to build another AI agent, nor is it simply to add AI features to a wallet. What we truly care about is this: In an AI-native internet, how can people still retain final control?The Fourth S: SignIf the 3S of the first decade were Store, Send, and Stake, then the fourth S for the next decade is Sign.In the past, Sign usually meant signing a transaction. But in the age of intelligent agents, the meaning of Sign will expand. It will no longer be just a transaction approval. It will become a foundational interface through which humans express authorization, define boundaries, delegate actions, and retain control.In the future, what you sign may not only be a transaction. It may be an intent, a permission and delegation, a policy, or a revocation.AI agents can propose plans, execute tasks, and amplify efficiency. But their actions must be built on top of your clear, verifiable, constrained and revocable authorization.Sign to permit intelligent actions under your control.This is how we understand the fourth S. It is also the core product thesis for imToken’s next decade.From a Trusted Main Wallet to a Personal Control InterfaceOver the past ten years, imToken has become a trusted main wallet for many users. We treat this with deep respect. “Main wallet” is not a title we take lightly. It means users have entrusted us with long-term assets, important identities, critical transactions, and a sense of security. It also requires us to remain restrained, reliable, and long-term oriented in product, technology, security, user experience, and risk communication.In the future, imToken will still first and foremost be a trustworthy wallet. We will not abandon the clarity of what a wallet is in order to chase concepts, nor will we push users into complex systems they cannot understand or control. But we also know that the role of the wallet is naturally expanding. In an open and intelligent internet, individuals need to manage not only assets, but also identity, permissions, data, AI agents, automated tasks, and increasingly complex digital relationships.Therefore, imToken will gradually evolve from a trusted main wallet into a personal control interface — an interface that helps you control your assets, identity, permissions, and intelligent actions.This is not a leap from wallet to abstract platform. It is a natural extension of the wallet’s core logic: keys are the root of control; signatures are the expression of authorization; permissions define boundaries; policies set the rules for actions; revocation protects freedom; and auditability is the foundation of accountability.The wallet of the future will not only be an entry point for assets. It will also become a trusted control interface for collaboration between humans and intelligent systems.The Direction of the Next DecadeGuided by this direction, imToken will continue to protect the root of self-custody. No matter how technology changes, users should not easily give away final control over their assets and critical rights.We will also move from transaction security toward authorization security and action security. In the past, users were most concerned about private key leaks, signing the wrong transaction, or interacting with malicious contracts. In the future, users will also need to know whether they have authorized an agent to act over the long term, whether they have granted excessive limits, and whether they can pause or revoke that authorization at any time. What imToken needs to do is make these originally complex, hidden, and hard-to-understand authorization relationships clearer and more controllable.AI can help people accomplish more. But people should always be able to understand, approve, limit, and audit those actions. We want to make intelligent actions more controllable, not make control more ambiguous.This is a long-term direction, and it is not a question that imToken can answer alone. But it is a question we must help build toward.Building for the Long Road AheadTen years is not an endpoint. It is a clearer starting point.We will continue moving forward as builders: fewer slogans, more products; less chasing of hype, more infrastructure; less short-term noise, more long-term trust. We will also continue to stay true to why we started, sense the direction of change, understand what is essential, endure through time, keep iterating, and move forward with conviction.If imToken’s first decade was about helping you truly own your digital assets, then imToken’s next decade is about helping you continue to control your digital world in the intelligent age.Your Digital World, Under Your Control.Thank you to every user, developer, investor, partner, and team member who has experienced, believed, and built with imToken over the past ten years.The road ahead is still long. We will continue exploring, continue building, and continue moving toward the horizon. Ben HeFounder & CEO, imTokenJune 2026

For a long time, when we talked about wallets, we were mostly talking about assets.Where should BTC be stored? How do you transfer ETH? How should NFTs be managed? How do users access and use DeFi or RWAs? For most crypto users, a wallet was, in a sense, their gateway to assets.But AI is changing this.When users can describe what they need in natural language, and when AI can help break down the steps required to complete an action, the role of the wallet also begins to change. This has become especially clear over the past six months. A wallet is increasingly becoming the command center for a user’s digital world.From this perspective, the real question for wallets in the AI era may not be whether they can do more things on behalf of users. It is this: when more and more actions can be automated, how can users continue to understand each interaction and retain ultimate control?This is the new question imToken continues to answer as it enters its next decade.1. The New Wallet Narrative: From an Asset Entry Point to a Personal Digital HubIf you had told an Ethereum user in 2016 that ten years later, they could simply type into a chat box, “Help me generate a minimalist wallet that only shows NFTs, AI-related tokens, and common actions,” and then receive an app that could run on a testnet, they would probably think you were a project founder who could not even write a convincing whitepaper.But by 2026, this no longer feels like science fiction.If you recently took part in imToken’s 10th anniversary event, you may have seen something similar already becoming possible: a user only needs to describe their need in natural language, and an initial wallet interface can be generated, showing NFTs, AI tokens, and common actions such as Receive, Sign, and Swap.“Your Digital World, Under Your Control” is a fitting way to summarize imToken’s new narrative for its tenth anniversary. It is not about packaging the wallet as a platform that does everything. Rather, it recognizes that as the digital world users enter becomes more complex, they need a long-term, trusted, secure, and clear entry point that remains under their own control.That entry point has been the wallet, and the wallet will continue to evolve into it. The more complex the digital world becomes, the more it needs a trusted starting point.In the past, wallets mainly helped users prove that “these assets belong to me.” Whether it was ETH, ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, DeFi positions, or later RWA assets, the wallet’s core role was to serve as an asset container and a signing entry point.But in the AI era, wallets also need to help users confirm more things: Do these identities belong to me? Are these authorizations managed by me? Do I understand these actions? Are these automated workflows still within my control boundaries?This is the core of the “personal digital hub” narrative. It also means the wallet’s next stage is not merely to remain a wallet, but to become the foundational interface for entering the digital world.Take imToken as an example. If we divide its past decade into three stages, a clear trajectory emerges:From 2016 to 2023, the wallet was a container for assets. Starting from the Ethereum ecosystem and expanding alongside ERC-20 tokens, DeFi, NFTs, and other asset forms, the core question was simple: how to keep private keys as safely as possible on users’ own devices, and how to make every newly emerging token reliably fit into the same container. At this stage, users cared most about whether assets could be stored safely and accessed or moved out smoothly.From 2024 to 2025, wallets began to stand at a paradigm shift. Tokens were no longer just assets. They started to extend toward identity, data, agents, and permission relationships. Ethereum’s narrative also moved beyond scaling and toward directions closer to user experience, such as account abstraction. As the way users interact with blockchains began to be rewritten, the wallet, once a relatively stable piece of the puzzle, began to shift significantly for the first time.From 2026 onward, wallets are moving toward the role of a “personal digital hub.” As AI begins to participate in app generation, transaction understanding, risk detection, and automated execution, the wallet is no longer just a tool being used. It is becoming more like each person’s digital command center, coordinating collaboration between users and AI agents.These three stages can be summed up in one sentence: tokens evolve, control remains.Asset forms will change. Interaction models will change. AI capabilities will change. But what the wallet must protect remains the same: the user’s ultimate control over their own digital world.2. Functionality Is Not the Destination. Security Is the Foundation.Take imToken’s 10th anniversary AI co-creation initiative as an example. What matters most is not simply “generating a wallet interface with AI,” but how it brings the question of how wallets should work with AI down to a more foundational level.One thing needs to be made clear first: the AI direction imToken has shown so far is not the radical path of “handing private keys to AI and letting AI trade automatically for you.” Instead, it focuses on three more practical directions: allowing users to participate in wallet co-creation through natural language, making the wallet’s underlying capabilities easier for developers and AI to access, and embedding security rules into generation and interaction from the start.We believe this path is more consistent with how wallets should evolve.Because a wallet is not an ordinary app. If an ordinary app gets a button wrong, the result may simply be a poor user experience. But if a wallet gets a signature, an authorization, or a private key handling process wrong, it may lead to real asset loss. That is why wallets in the AI era cannot focus only on generating things quickly. They must also be secure by design, easy to understand, and verifiable.One of the most concrete steps is to further open Token Core capabilities to co-creation scenarios. For everyday users, Token Core may sound technical, but it can be understood as the “heart” of the imToken wallet. It handles the wallet’s most essential capabilities, such as private key and keystore management, address generation, transaction signing, and multi-chain support.In simple terms, wallet interfaces can take many forms. But what truly determines whether a wallet can securely manage assets, sign correctly, and run reliably across different chains is this underlying “heart.”Token Core was open-sourced as early as 2018. At the time, it mainly served imToken’s own mobile wallet, supporting multi-chain asset management and signing on iOS and Android. Today, Token Core has evolved into a wallet core library that supports multiple public chains and cross-platform calls.What is especially worth noting in the tenth anniversary-related branch is the emergence of a WebAssembly version.WebAssembly sounds technical. In plain language, WebAssembly makes it easier for core wallet capabilities that used to run mostly in apps or local environments to run in the browser. As a result, web-based wallet demos, AI-generated wallet applications, and wallet prototypes built by developers may be able to call underlying wallet capabilities more directly.The significance is that the wallet no longer has to be just a collection of features inside a closed app. It can become a more open and composable set of foundational capabilities. Alongside this, several easier-to-understand tools have also appeared: The Token Core CLI demo can be understood as a “command-line demo console.” It breaks down core wallet actions, such as creating a wallet, deriving addresses, managing keystores, and signing transactions, so developers and AI can see more clearly what the wallet is doing under the hood. Token UI can be understood as a “wallet interface template library.” Built on imToken’s design system, it helps participants build wallet-like interfaces more quickly. Users can ask AI to generate a wallet interface prototype without having to design every button, list, and asset card from scratch. security/SKILL.md is more like a “wallet security manual” written specifically for AI coding assistants. When AI generates code involving seed phrases, private keys, signatures, or authorizations, it cannot simply focus on making the feature work. It must first understand the hard boundaries, and any asset-related operation must require user confirmation. These open-source initiatives may differ from how many people used to think about wallet competition.In the past, it was easy to think of a wallet as an app: whoever supported more chains, had a better-looking interface, and offered more complete DApp entry points had the advantage. But after the arrival of the AI era, wallet competition may take a different form: whoever can provide more trusted underlying capabilities, help users and developers compose wallet functions more safely, and still maintain security boundaries when AI generates experiences will be better positioned to become the foundation of users’ digital worlds.This is why imToken’s AI efforts should not be reduced to “an AI wallet-generation event.” It is actually answering a more foundational question: when AI can generate more wallet interfaces, interactions, and applications, what must remain stable? What can be opened to users and the community for recomposition? And what must be constrained by security rules?imToken’s answer is: trust belongs in the core, control belongs to the user, and innovation belongs to the community.3. The New Map for Crypto Users: From Natural Language Entry Points to Agent Boundary ManagementWhat, then, can we expect Web3 wallets to look like over the next decade?If we bring the two threads above together, one side is imToken bringing the wallet core, UI templates, and security rules to users and developers. The other side is AI gaining stronger understanding and orchestration capabilities between users and blockchains. In this process, the position of an ordinary crypto user is undergoing a very interesting shift.In the past, users mostly adapted to wallets.Users used whatever homepage the wallet provided, clicked the features it supported, and followed its transaction flow step by step. Even heavy users were often just switching back and forth between fixed functions.But with AI involved, wallets may increasingly adapt to users. This means the Web3 wallet of the next decade may not simply have more and more features. Instead, its form may become increasingly personalized. You may no longer need to tolerate a wallet homepage that looks the same for everyone. If you are a DeFi power user, you could ask AI to generate a minimalist interface focused only on yield, risk, and position changes, bringing together major positions across chains, yield rates, redemption timelines, and risk status. If you only care about stablecoin inflows and outflows, your wallet homepage could show only your USDC and USDT balances, recent incoming payments, and frequently used receiving addresses, without distracting you with irrelevant assets and entry points. If you are deeply involved in LSTs or LRTs, the wallet could bring the real ETH positions, yields, exit windows, and potential risks behind different staking tokens into a clearer dashboard. If you simply want to set up a small wallet for a family member, it could keep only receiving, sending, and balance display, while hiding complex DApps, authorizations, and cross-chain features. The underlying signing, address, and transfer logic does not change. What changes is the upper-layer experience. In short, a wallet is no longer just a standardized product. It becomes a digital tool assembled from the wallet core, UI Kit, and personal needs.Looking further ahead, the next generation of crypto users may enter an on-chain world populated by many AI agents.Your AI assistant may scan stablecoin pool spreads for you every day. Your research agent may run small tests when a new protocol launches. Your payment agent may handle subscriptions, refunds, and payment splitting. Your asset management agent may remind you to rebalance according to rules you set.These scenarios may sound futuristic, but they do not mean users should hand their private keys to AI. Quite the opposite: the stronger agents become, the more important wallets become. A healthy relationship between AI and wallets is not about letting agents take unlimited control of user assets. It is about allowing agents to make requests, while the wallet translates those requests into transaction details users can understand and hands the final confirmation back to the user.In other words, AI agents can discover opportunities, make suggestions, and generate paths. The wallet must be responsible for risk warnings, permission constraints, and final signatures.Overall, AI will make wallets smarter and on-chain actions smoother. This is a major shift, and it has only just begun.Final ThoughtsThe underlying logic of the crypto world has always been built on user control. The question of private keys will not disappear because of AI. On the contrary, it will become even more important.This is where imToken’s new narrative, and the truly important direction of the wallet sector, come into focus.Especially as the digital world expands from assets to identity and AI agents, users will still need a trusted entry point that helps them understand, confirm, and control every digital action they take. From a trusted main wallet to a personal digital hub, this is not conceptual packaging. It is the natural extension of the wallet’s role in a new technological environment.Perhaps when we look back at 2026 from 2036, we will see a somewhat counterintuitive fact: the next decade of wallets will not only be about more powerful features. Users will no longer simply be the people services are built for; they will become the ones who define those services.Your digital world, under your control.

Ten years is a moment for reflection. More importantly, it is a moment to reaffirm where we are heading.In the past, the digital world in crypto was largely centered around assets. From BTC and ETH to ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, DeFi, and RWAs, the forms of token have continued to expand, and wallets have helped users securely hold, manage, and use these assets.Now, AI is reshaping digital infrastructure and the way people interact with it. As users’ relationship with the digital world become more flexible, efficient, and intent-driven, they are also becoming more complex. “You” are no longer just an address or an account, but a more complete digital presence — carrying identity, permissions, ownership, and boundaries of action into the open network. And the “digital world” is no longer limited to assets. It also includes identity, authorization, smart accounts, AI agents, and more automated interaction scenarios.That is why imToken needs to continue evolving. What remains unchanged is “under your control.” No matter how far the digital world expands, users should retain ultimate control over their assets, identity, and actions.imToken’s brand evolution starts from its role as a trusted main wallet. Built on Trust, Control, and Becoming, imToken is gradually evolving into a personal control interface for the open, intelligent internet.A Wallet Begins with TrustFor many users, a wallet is not just another app.An ordinary app can be replaced, uninstalled, or re-registered. A wallet is different. It holds the digital assets users truly own. It is the starting point of every on-chain action, and the entry point through which users build their relationship with the open network.That is why the core value of a wallet is not how many features it has, but whether it can be trusted.Over the past ten years, imToken has built around this foundational value: users hold their own private keys and control their own assets; assets are not held by the platform, nor is ownership defined by a centralized account. A wallet needs to be reliable, secure, stable, and worthy of being trusted with users’ primary assets.This is imToken’s most important product role today: a trusted main wallet for your digital world.This positioning is simple, but important. In an open network, true control is never just a slogan. It is supported by a series of concrete capabilities: users need to manage private keys securely, confirm signatures clearly, understand what they are authorizing, know what each transaction may result in, and receive clear risk signals in a complex on-chain environment.These specific and foundational capabilities form the basis of imToken’s trust. Ten years later, we still believe that wallet is imToken’s clearest and most important starting point. Now, we are building on top of it to answer the next question.The User’s Digital World Is Opening Up New PossibilitiesIn the past, when we talked about wallets, we were mostly talking about assets: which tokens users hold, how they participate in DeFi, how they manage NFTs, and how they complete an on-chain transaction.Today, AI, smart accounts, cross-application authorization, and richer on-chain applications are opening up more possibilities for users’ digital worlds. A wallet will no longer only help users store and transfer assets. It will also take part in identity verification, permission management, application access, and more digital actions assisted by AI agents.The digital world is becoming more capable and more automated. Users can enter applications more easily, call services, combine assets and identity, and let systems assist with complex operations that used to require manual effort.When more actions can be authorized, delegated, or executed automatically, users need to understand more clearly: What identity am I using to enter an application? Who have I authorized? Which permissions are still active? Which actions represent me? Who holds the final right to confirm and control?These changes will continue to drive the evolution of the wallet. A wallet will no longer be just an asset container. It will increasingly become the central interface of a user’s digital world: connecting assets and identity, managing transactions and authorization, and helping users stay in control across a broader digital world.From a Trusted Main Wallet to a Personal Control InterfaceThis is the direction imToken is moving toward: from a trusted main wallet to a personal control interface.In the past, that entry point was the wallet. In the future, the wallet will remain the foundation of that entry point.imToken remains committed to its legacy: a trusted main wallet for long-term self-custody, where users retain full control and true ownership of their assets. At the same time, we are building for what’s next. We are transforming imToken from a secure vault into a dynamic interface—supporting not just your assets, but your identity and every intelligent interaction in the open network.In short, your main wallet today. Your personal control interface tomorrow. Trust, Control, and Becoming‘Under your control’ is not just a slogan—it is a reality built on three unbreakable pillars: Trust, Control and Becoming.Trust is the foundation for a wallet to carry users’ assets over the long term. Without trust, users will not entrust a product with important assets, key identities, or high-value permissions.Control is the core that imToken has always upheld. In the past, this control was mostly reflected in asset self-custody. In the future, control will become broader. As identity, permissions, smart accounts, AI agents, and more on-chain behaviors enter users’ digital lives, users need to control not only “where the money is,” but also “who can act on my behalf,” “which permissions belong to me,” and “which actions require my final confirmation.”Becoming is our commitment to evolution. We are building beyond the traditional wallet to create the ultimate personal control interface. It is a gateway designed to solve the friction of the next digital era, turning complex permissions and interactions into a seamless, user-controlled experience.Our journey is defined by pragmatic innovation, and these are our commitments.Your Digital World, Under Your ControlThe tenth anniversary is not an endpoint. It is a new beginning.Over the past ten years, imToken has accompanied users as they entered the on-chain world, managed assets, understood self-custody, and built trust in the open network. In the next ten years, users’ digital worlds will continue to expand. Assets will become more diverse. Identity will become more important. The Permission relationship will become more complex. AI agents will participate in more digital actions. And the open network will carry more real user needs.What imToken wants to uphold remains unchanged: users should own their digital world, understand their digital actions, and control their assets, identity, and permissions.So this brand evolution is not a conceptual shift. It starts from the trusted main wallet and continues to answer the same question:In an ever-changing digital world, how can users remain in control?Your Digital World, Under Your Control. 

For a long time, discussions about “mainstream adoption” in the crypto industry tended to focus on a familiar set of metrics: For example, how many people hold Bitcoin, how many addresses interact with on-chain protocols, and how many users have begun using wallets, exchanges, and DeFi.Behind these metrics was a relatively linear assumption: ordinary users would first need to understand crypto, then buy crypto assets, create a wallet, and gradually enter the on-chain world.Recent developments, however, may be reversing this path. Users do not necessarily need to understand blockchain before they encounter crypto infrastructure. Instead, existing needs—such as prediction markets, cross-border transfers, and stock trading—are beginning to absorb crypto technology. These areas may appear to belong to three separate sectors, and adoption is unfolding along different paths, but they all point to the same underlying shift:Crypto is shifting from a new financial system that users must actively enter into infrastructure that traditional finance and mainstream applications can plug into directly.1. Prediction Markets: From On-Chain Event Trading to a Tool for Pricing ProbabilitiesPrediction markets are nothing new.In the crypto world, Augur emerged early in Ethereum’s development as the network’s first DApp. It offered an early demonstration that any event with an objectively verifiable outcome could be turned into an on-chain contract, with real-money trading reflecting the market’s expectations about the future.For a long time afterward, however, prediction markets were simply labeled “on-chain gambling” and never truly moved beyond crypto-native circles. The early users of platforms such as Polymarket were indeed mostly crypto-native participants already familiar with wallets, stablecoins, and on-chain trading:On the one hand, the learning curve associated with wallets, stablecoins, and on-chain transactions limited participation among ordinary users. On the other, even when Polymarket briefly broke into the mainstream through events such as the U.S. presidential election, its core participants remained mostly crypto-savvy traders.The 2026 World Cup, however, offers a more mainstream lens through which to view prediction markets. Further reading: "World Cup Fever Propels Prediction Markets: How Polymarket and Peers Are Driving Mainstream Crypto Adoption"Compared with monetary policy, economic data, and political elections, football requires almost no additional explanation. Who will advance from the group stage? Which team will reach the semifinals? Can a particular player finish as the top scorer? These are questions football fans already discuss every day.Prediction markets simply turn these scattered views into a price that changes in real time. That is why changes in the regulatory environment alone will not be enough for prediction markets to truly break into the mainstream. They also need a public event large and intuitive enough to engage a mass audience—and the World Cup fits the bill.Many of crypto’s breakout moments have occurred when technologies with high cognitive barriers meet use cases that are easy to understand. NFTs briefly entered the mainstream because they connected on-chain assets with avatars, art, and community identity. Meme coins spread rapidly because they compressed complex financial behavior into basic emotions and cultural symbols.Likewise, the gateway through which prediction markets reach a broader audience may not be macroeconomic data or complex political-event contracts, but sports, entertainment, and major events that people already want to discuss.The World Cup is particularly well suited to this role because it naturally meets three conditions.First, it has broad global recognition. Even people who are not dedicated football fans can understand basic questions such as who will win, who will advance, and who will lift the trophy.Second, it produces a constant stream of information. Pre-match lineups, player form, injury and availability updates, tactical changes, and the course of the match all continually reshape market expectations.Third, it has a strong social dimension. Watching football is rarely an isolated activity; it comes with group chats, reposts, discussions, arguments, and shared emotion.At the same time, the competitive landscape for prediction markets is expanding. Recently, competition has clearly moved beyond specialist platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, as prediction markets are increasingly integrated into traditional brokerages, crypto trading platforms, and even media products.The reason is straightforward. Traditional financial markets already offer a wide range of risk-pricing instruments, including options, futures, and interest-rate swaps. These products are often difficult to understand, and ordinary users may struggle to read the market’s expectations directly from their prices, whereas prediction markets compress complex questions into a more intuitive probability.This is why prediction markets may become part of traditional financial infrastructure: they offer not just another way to bet, but an accessible, real-time tool for pricing expectations.Of course, this path remains controversial.Questions around how events should be defined and settled, whether insiders should be allowed to participate, whether financial-event contracts could amount to insider trading, and whether sports contracts should be regulated as federal derivatives or under state gambling laws all remain unresolved. As the market grows, some Wall Street firms have also begun restricting employees from trading prediction-market contracts tied to economic data and corporate events.Whatever the outcome of these debates, the process through which prediction markets gain mainstream recognition is also the process through which they evolve from open experiments in event trading into financial market infrastructure.2. Stablecoins: From Crypto Assets to Payment and Settlement InfrastructureIf prediction markets are bringing a crypto-native product into the mainstream, stablecoins are taking a different route: they are gradually disappearing behind traditional payment products.For most crypto users, stablecoins have long served primarily as a medium of exchange. Users swap other tokens with USDT or USDC, move funds between exchanges, or deposit stablecoins into DeFi protocols to earn returns. As a result, circulating supply has traditionally been treated as one of the main measures of a stablecoin’s competitiveness.In the next phase, however, competition may no longer be determined solely by on-chain supply. What may matter more is who secures an early compliance advantage and embeds stablecoins in real-world use cases such as payments, settlement, and cross-border transfers.One of the most discussed recent examples is Open USD, launched by Open Standard with the participation of more than 140 companies across the payments, banking, technology, and crypto sectors.Unlike the traditional model, in which a single issuer captures most of the reserve income, Open USD allows partners to mint and redeem it free of charge and plans to distribute reserve income—after management fees—to the partners that drive its use.Visa and Stripe also describe OUSD as shared infrastructure for moving money globally. What makes this design noteworthy is not simply the addition of another dollar stablecoin, but its attempt to reshape how stablecoin economics are distributed. Traditionally, issuers capture most reserve income, while wallets, exchanges, payment companies, and fintech platforms bear much of the cost of user acquisition, product integration, and distribution.If more reserve income flows to distribution channels and real-world use cases, the competitive dynamics of stablecoins will change accordingly. This also explains why the involvement of Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and Zelle matters more than simply adding another on-chain asset.Ultimately, stablecoins are shifting from crypto products that users must actively hold and manage into money-movement components that traditional businesses can use directly. Users may see a cross-border remittance, merchant settlement, corporate payment, payroll service, or payment card, while stablecoins and public blockchain settlement networks operate in the background. They may already be relying on stablecoin settlement without even knowing it.At the same time, some stablecoin projects without meaningful distribution channels or practical use cases are leaving the market. This further demonstrates that issuing a stablecoin does not automatically make it valuable.As the underlying technology becomes more standardized, the real moats will increasingly lie in licensing, regulatory compliance, and the ability to embed a stablecoin in a business use case that generates sustained transaction demand.This also means that the ultimate competitors of stablecoins may not be other stablecoins, but card networks, cross-border remittance systems, bank deposits, and corporate treasury infrastructure.3. Tokenized Stocks: Traditional Assets Move into On-Chain AccountsCompared with prediction markets and stablecoins, tokenized stocks represent a more direct form of convergence.Rather than introducing a crypto product to traditional users, tokenized stocks bring stocks, ETFs, funds, and other traditional assets into accounts that were previously used mainly to hold and trade crypto assets.Over the past six months, nearly every major crypto trading platform has rushed into the market. Meanwhile, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, made a strategic investment in OKX. The two plan to collaborate on U.S.-regulated crypto futures, ICE market products, and NYSE-related tokenized stocks. At the time of writing, OKX had also just announced plans to launch tokenized U.S. equities.From a market-structure perspective, this partnership is highly symbolic. In the past, crypto exchanges tried to provide users with exposure to stock prices through synthetic assets, perpetual contracts, or third-party issuers. Now, the operator of a traditional exchange is participating directly in product design, price data, compliance, and the development of on-chain market infrastructure.Similar changes are already emerging at the user-facing layer. Beyond specialized apps, trading platforms, wallets, and on-chain DEXs—from Robinhood to Interactive Brokers—are all trying to become comprehensive financial accounts that support trading in crypto assets, stocks, and even commodities.Tokenized stocks, however, are also particularly easy to misunderstand.A token bearing the name of Apple, Nvidia, or Tesla does not necessarily mean that its holder directly owns common shares in the corresponding company. Different products may represent direct ownership of real shares, beneficial interests in shares held through a special-purpose vehicle, debt instruments that an issuer promises to redeem, or derivatives that merely track a stock’s price.These structures can differ significantly in dividends, voting rights, redemption rights, bankruptcy remoteness, and investor protection. Even if a token circulates on a public blockchain, the legal relationships that determine the holder’s ultimate rights often remain off-chain, in the issuer, custodian, and governing contracts. Most RWA systems today use this hybrid architecture.Tokenization therefore does not automatically create liquidity or give users the same rights as traditional shareholders. These limitations, however, do not prevent tokenized stocks from becoming an important gateway.As compliance, custody, and shareholder-rights issues are gradually addressed, stocks will no longer need to exist only in brokerage accounts. They could sit alongside stablecoins in the same on-chain account, be divided into smaller units, trade across regions and trading hours, and be used as collateral or for lending, automated investing, and programmable asset allocation.At that point, wallets and trading platforms will no longer compete solely over the storage and trading of crypto assets, but over who can become the unified gateway through which users manage global assets.Closing ThoughtsMainstream adoption may succeed precisely when users no longer notice the crypto infrastructure behind the product.Crypto’s path to mainstream adoption may follow a similar process: true maturity may not mean that everyone remembers concepts such as blockchain, wallets, and stablecoins, but that users gradually stop noticing the technology at all as crypto disappears behind the products they use.On closer examination, prediction markets, stablecoins, and tokenized stocks are entering traditional finance in different ways: Prediction markets bring a product model developed in the crypto world into mainstream markets, turning events and uncertainty into probabilities that can be traded in real time; Stablecoins embed on-chain settlement into payments, remittances, and corporate fund flows, allowing users to access new financial networks without needing to understand blockchain; Tokenized stocks bring traditional assets into on-chain accounts, allowing wallets, exchanges, and public blockchains to gradually become new channels for the issuance, trading, and settlement of traditional securities; Together, these represent adoption at three levels: products, money, and assets. For the industry, this may point to a new path toward mainstream adoption—one that no longer requires every user to become a crypto user first, but lets on-chain technology adapt to financial needs that users already understand.The role of wallets will change accordingly.Once wallets contain not only native tokens and NFTs but also stablecoins, stocks, funds, commodities, and event contracts, they will need to handle more than private keys and on-chain balances. They will also need to lower the barriers to using different assets and better connect on-chain and off-chain account systems.Imagine using imToken to send money instantly to friends or family overseas, trade on whether an event will occur, or buy a fractional share of a U.S. stock—without necessarily thinking of any of these activities as “using crypto.”It is precisely when crypto no longer needs to be repeatedly emphasized that the technology may finally move beyond a relatively self-contained niche market and enter the broader financial and commercial landscape.

Over the past two weeks, Ethereum has undergone an unprecedented organizational shift.On June 22, 2026, five former Ethereum Foundation researchers announced the launch of Ethlabs, an independently operated nonprofit R&D lab.A day later, the Ethereum Foundation announced a new organizational structure and confirmed that 54 employees, representing approximately 20% of its total headcount, would leave the organization.On July 1, another independent nonprofit, Ethereum Institutional, officially launched and began carrying forward the institutional partnership work previously handled by EF’s market development team.Viewed in isolation, these developments could easily fit a familiar pessimistic narrative: the Foundation is under financial pressure, core talent is leaving, and the ecosystem is entering a period of turbulence.Similar views have indeed been circulating in market commentary.But when these developments are viewed together, a fuller picture emerges. Ethereum appears to be deliberately reducing its reliance on a single foundation and distributing functions once concentrated within EF across multiple independent ecosystem organizations with distinct roles.Ethereum seems to be addressing a long-standing question: when a decentralized network becomes global infrastructure, what kinds of organizations should support its continued development?1. Why Is EF Choosing to Scale Itself Back?To be fair, when viewed through a traditional business lens, these changes can easily be misinterpreted. In the world of conventional technology companies, layoffs almost always signal revenue pressure, business contraction, or strategic failure.But the Ethereum Foundation is not a typical company.It has no shareholders in the traditional sense, does not measure success by market share or quarterly profit, and does not “own” the Ethereum network in any practical sense. In many ways, EF is better understood as a steward of the protocol: it supports core protocol R&D, funds public goods, coordinates ecosystem resources, and safeguards principles that should not be easily compromised as Ethereum evolves.This creates an inherent tension for EF.On the one hand, Ethereum needs people committed to long-term protocol research, upgrade coordination, and public goods. On the other hand, if research, funding, talent, and decision-making become increasingly concentrated within the Foundation, EF itself risks becoming one of Ethereum’s largest sources of centralization.This is why EF has long followed an organizational philosophy of “doing subtraction.” A healthy Ethereum ecosystem should not depend on an ever-expanding foundation, but on a broad network of independent organizations and contributors. In that sense, the Foundation’s success should ultimately be measured by a gradual decline in its relative influence, rather than by continuous organizational growth.This was not a sudden shift. In its 2025 treasury policy, EF had already stated that it would gradually narrow its scope, reduce annual operating expenses over the following five years, and move toward a more sustainable long-term organizational model.As we noted several months ago, EF had been going through a strained and turbulent period since 2025. At the time, it was at the center of intense public criticism, with some community members even calling for a so-called “wartime CEO” to drive change.Eventually, those internal tensions became public, prompting EF to undertake its most high-profile leadership restructuring since its founding.In early 2025, Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi was elevated to President, while Vitalik Buterin pledged to restructure the leadership team.Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz K. Stańczak were subsequently appointed co-executive directors.Etherealize, a new organization focused on marketing and ecosystem narratives and led by former researcher Danny Ryan, was also launched.At the same time, EF further reorganized its board and reaffirmed its commitment to cypherpunk values.By mid-year, the Foundation had also restructured its R&D function, consolidated teams, and adjusted staffing to keep core protocol priorities in focus.In hindsight, these changes appear to have brought greater focus and discipline to Ethereum’s protocol development. Pectra was activated on May 7, 2025. Less than seven months later, Fusaka also went live on mainnet on December 3.In its subsequent annual review, EF described 2025 as one of the most productive years for Ethereum’s protocol layer. Together, the two major upgrades brought Ethereum significantly closer to its long-discussed goal of accelerating the hard fork cadence.For more, see “Ethereum 2026: Interpreting EF’s Latest Protocol Roadmap—Is Ethereum Entering an Engineering-Driven Upgrade Era?”From this perspective, the June 2026 layoffs look less like an isolated crisis and more like the first clear public expression of a longer-term strategy.Following the restructuring, EF’s work was divided into five main clusters: Protocol, Access, User, Community, and Institutional, alongside operations, management, and related support functions.EF explained that reducing headcount by approximately 20% was intended to focus the organization and its resources on the work that “only EF can and must do.”In other words, EF is actively narrowing its own scope.The next question, then, is who will take on the work from which EF is stepping back.2. How Should We Understand Ethlabs and Ethereum Institutional?At first glance, this transition may resemble a three-way split, with talent, research, and institutional functions once concentrated within EF beginning to spread across different organizations.In practice, however, this is better understood as a functional separation than as a formal division of power.EF, Ethlabs, and Ethereum Institutional do not have a parent-subsidiary or superior-subordinate relationship. They are better understood as three connected organizations within Ethereum’s broader governance network, each with a distinct role.First, there is Ethlabs.Ethlabs was announced one day before EF disclosed its restructuring plan. Its founding members include Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma, all prominent researchers who have worked on Ethereum finality, scaling, data availability, the virtual machine, protocol economics, and related areas.Ethlabs describes itself as an independent nonprofit R&D lab serving Ethereum and ETH. Its mission can be summarized in one sentence: to make Ethereum the settlement layer for the global economy.In Ethlabs’ framing, Ethereum should be more than a blockchain for issuing tokens and running applications. It should become neutral settlement infrastructure for digital assets, stablecoins, on-chain markets, institutions, and AI agents.This mission highlights an important distinction between Ethlabs and EF.EF’s core responsibility is to ensure that Ethereum does not sacrifice censorship resistance, privacy, and user sovereignty in pursuit of short-term adoption or commercial interests.Its own organizational description explicitly states that the protocol team’s role is not to make Ethereum easier to market, nor to turn it into a financial rail controlled by intermediaries.Ethlabs operates from a different position. It can speak more directly about ecosystem growth, ETH value capture, institutional demand, and real-world adoption.In other words, Ethlabs positions itself between two worlds: wallets, applications, Layer 2 networks, infrastructure teams, institutions, and end users on one side; Ethereum’s core protocol, researchers, and core developers on the other.Its role is to translate real-world needs from the former into protocol R&D, shared standards, infrastructure, and deployable products.This also helps explain the role of Ethereum Institutional.If Ethlabs is intended to translate R&D into ecosystem growth as EF narrows its scope, Ethereum Institutional is intended to take on the institutional outreach and relationship-building work that EF had previously handled largely on its own.Put simply, the nonprofit continues the institutional partnership work carried out by EF’s market development team over the previous year.It positions itself as a “neutral front door” for traditional institutions entering the Ethereum ecosystem, aiming to address a question Ethereum has long struggled with: when a bank or asset manager wants to deploy a product on Ethereum, who exactly should it talk to?This question has become increasingly urgent in recent years.Ecosystems such as Solana have clearer foundations, business development teams, and institutional partnership channels. Supported by well-funded and highly proactive commercial teams, they have continued to gain ground among global financial institutions.Ethereum, by contrast, has long lacked a unified external interface because of its emphasis on decentralization and credible neutrality.There is a deeper contradiction here.Neutrality is an advantage in technology and governance, but in real-world business settings, it can also mean that there is “no clear owner.”When an institution such as BlackRock wants to deploy a product on Ethereum, it needs a team with which it can maintain an ongoing relationship, rather than a foundation that, in the name of absolute neutrality, avoids engaging with Wall Street or sovereign institutions in the way a traditional company might.Ethereum Institutional is attempting to resolve precisely this tension: no single organization can represent Ethereum, but institutions still need someone with whom they can maintain a sustained dialogue.Its funding and leadership may therefore become an important advantage.Incubated with support from Bitmine, Sharplink, and Joe Lubin, and led by experienced figures such as former BlackRock executive Joseph Chalom, Ethereum Institutional is well positioned to engage directly with banks, asset managers, custodians, market infrastructure providers, fintech companies, and sovereign institutions.Ethereum Institutional aims to help institutions understand Ethereum, articulate their needs, and translate those needs into viable on-chain projects.Its work focuses on five areas:Institutional education and communication: helping traditional financial institutions understand Ethereum’s technical architecture, governance model, and current ecosystem landscape.Institutional market intelligence: tracking and analyzing trends, obstacles, and best practices in institutional Ethereum adoption.ETH and Ethereum ecosystem advocacy: explaining Ethereum’s value proposition to the traditional financial sector.Industry needs and standards research: translating real institutional requirements into standards recommendations and product requirements.Institutional events and relationship-building: establishing sustained relationships in financial centers such as New York, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore.As a result, a clearer division of labor is emerging within Ethereum.EF safeguards the protocol’s core values and the public interest. Ethlabs connects protocol R&D with ecosystem growth. Ethereum Institutional supports institutional adoption. Wallets, applications, and infrastructure teams turn these underlying developments into products and user experiences.This also suggests that Ethereum governance is moving away from the relatively vague model in which “EF coordinates everything” and toward a more modular organizational structure.3. From “EF Drives Ethereum” to “The Ecosystem Stewards Ethereum Together”Ethereum’s governance structure has always been highly open, but many key responsibilities have still naturally flowed back to EF.The ecosystem could almost be summarized through the somewhat vague assumption that “EF coordinates everything.”When protocol research encountered difficulties, people looked to EF.When Ethereum’s market narrative fell behind, people criticized EF.When ETH underperformed, institutional adoption moved slowly, or the user experience failed to improve quickly enough, the outside world often treated EF as the organization ultimately responsible.This was itself a contradiction.Ethereum aims to become a decentralized network that does not depend on any single organization, yet the ecosystem has long been accustomed to treating EF as its ultimate point of accountability.Now, a more modular structure is taking shape.Each key function is increasingly being handled by a corresponding independent organization. These organizations are connected not by hierarchy, but by shared protocol goals and ecosystem interests.Of course, this does not mean Ethereum has already discovered a perfect new governance model.On the contrary, the real test is only beginning.Once different functions are distributed across independent organizations, Ethereum will face higher coordination costs.It will also need to prevent teams from working in silos, duplicating research, becoming overly influenced by funders, or allowing institutional priorities to outweigh the interests of ordinary users.From another perspective, however, this uncertainty is part of the price of decentralization.A truly decentralized protocol should not depend indefinitely on an ever-expanding foundation. Nor should its continued development depend on a small number of core contributors remaining within a single organization.The key to judging whether this transition succeeds lies not in how many people remain at EF, but in whether: the core protocol can continue to upgrade steadily; research talent can remain within the Ethereum ecosystem after leaving EF; independent organizations can collaborate effectively while maintaining meaningful checks and balances; institutional adoption can expand without sacrificing openness or user sovereignty; and wallets and applications can turn underlying progress into products that ordinary users can actually use. If these goals can be achieved, the decline of EF’s relative influence may ultimately prove that Ethereum is becoming more mature.At that point, Ethereum will no longer depend on a single foundation for its continued development. It will become an ecosystem jointly sustained by EF, independent research organizations, developers, wallets, applications, enterprises, and users.In 2026, Ethereum’s governance structure is finally beginning to reflect the distributed nature of the network itself.We believe this is not the endpoint of a crisis, but the beginning of a more resilient and vibrant Ethereum ecosystem.