The Protocol: Ethereum faces make-or-break moment as scaling, quantum and AI pressures mount

Plus: Solana developer platform, Balancer Labs to shut down and Bitcoin mining concentration triggers small reorg.

Make us preferred on Google

What to know:

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, a reporter at CoinDesk.

In this issue:

• Ethereum faces make-or-break moment in high-stakes balancing act as scaling, quantum and AI pressures mount
• Solana Foundation taps Mastercard, Western Union, Worldpay for institutional developer platform
• Balancer Labs will shut down as corporate entity became 'a liability' after $110 million exploit
• Bitcoin's mining concentration just showed up in a rare 2-block reorg

Network News

ETHEREUM FACES KEY MOMENT WITH QUANTUM, AI CHANGES AHEAD: The first couple of months of 2026 have forced the Ethereum community into a kind of introspection—one that goes beyond price, beyond technical upgrades, and into the question of what the network is actually trying to be. Even before this year, there has been a sense among builders and executives that Ethereum was on the verge of another growth phase—this time driven not by crypto-native users but by institutions and technology. Neobanks, as some argued, would quietly onboard millions by abstracting away the complexity of wallets and gas fees. Ethereum, in this framing, wouldn’t need to win users directly. It would sit beneath the interface, powering a new financial stack that, on the surface, looked nothing like crypto. It was a continuation of a long-running thesis: that Ethereum’s success would come from invisibility. That vision has been shaped in part by years of previous upgrades aimed at improving user experience and reducing costs. Changes like “proto-danksharding”, introduced in the Dencun upgrade, significantly lowered fees for layer 2 networks by increasing data downloads for transactions, while ongoing improvements to the base layer have made transactions more efficient. While the price of the network's ether (ETH) token has been determined by market forces, these upgrades have, together, helped move Ethereum closer to a model where users interact with applications without needing to understand the underlying infrastructure. But that narrative began to change a few weeks into the year, when Vitalik Buterin, delivered a sharp reality check to the broader ecosystem: “You are not scaling Ethereum.” The comment cut through what had, until then, been a largely celebratory conversation around rollups. These types of networks, also known as layer-2 (L2) networks, process transactions off Ethereum and then bundle them back onto the main chain to make it faster and cheaper. Layer-2 networks have exploded over the last few years, transaction fees have come down, and activity has spread—but the deeper question was whether any of this amounted to coherent scaling. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

SOLANA FOUNDATION RELEASES DEVELOPER PLATFORM FOR INSTITUTIONS: The Solana Foundation is launching a new developer platform aimed at making it easier for financial institutions to build blockchain-based products, with early users including Mastercard, Western Union and Worldpay. The Solana Developer Platform (SDP), currently available for developers to test, is a toolkit that enables enterprises to create and scale financial applications on Solana without deep crypto infrastructure expertise. The SDP will also integrate AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. The platform bundles services from more than 20 infrastructure providers — spanning custody, compliance, wallets and payments — into a single interface, streamlining what has traditionally been a fragmented process for institutions entering the space. At launch, SDP includes two live modules. The issuance module enables companies to create tokenized deposits, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, while the payments module supports fiat and stablecoin flows, including on- and off-ramps and onchain transactions. A trading module is expected later in 2026. The involvement of traditional payments firms underscores growing institutional interest in blockchain-based settlement. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

BALANCER LABS TO SHUT DOWN: The company that built decentralized finance (DeFi) powerhouse Balancer is closing. Balancer co-founder Fernando Martinelli announced that Balancer Labs, the corporate entity that incubated and funded the decentralized exchange protocol, will be shutting down. The decision comes roughly five months after a v2 exploit in November 2025 that drained approximately $110 million in digital assets, as CoinDesk first reported, including osETH, WETH, and wstETH, the third known security breach for the project and the one that created the legal exposure Martinelli cited as the reason for shutting down BLabs. "BLabs, as a corporate entity, has become a liability rather than an asset to the protocol's future and is just not sustainable as is without any sources of revenue," Martinelli wrote in a governance forum post. Martinelli added he "seriously considered" shutting everything down entirely. But he stopped short of calling for a full wind-down because the protocol still generates revenue. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

BITCOIN MINING CONCENTRATION TRIGGERS SMALL ‘REORG’: Bitcoin's mining concentration problem just showed up on the blockchain itself, triggering a small “reorg.” At the center of the story is Foundry USA, the largest bitcoin mining pool, representing a group of miners who combine their computing power to verify transactions, mine blocks, and split the rewards in BTC. On the blockchain, there are many miners, and sometimes two or more find a block at nearly the same time. When that happens, the network temporarily has two competing versions of the blockchain. Eventually, the network reorganizes back into a single chain, depending on which version grows faster. This process is called a blockchain reorganization, or “reorg.” That’s what happened earlier this week: Foundry and AntPool both mined blocks at roughly the same time, causing a chain split. Foundry then produced several consecutive blocks, moving slightly faster than its competitors, and became the chain the network followed. The result: the blockchain reorganized to Foundry’s version, and the blocks mined by AntPool and ViaBTC were orphaned or effectively erased from the ledger. Those miners earned nothing for the work they had done. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

In Other News

• The New York Stock Exchange (ICE) is teaming up with tokenization specialist Securitize to help design the infrastructure behind tokenized securities trading. Securitize is aiming to go public this year via a SPAC deal with Cantor Equitize Partners (CEPT). CEPT shares are higher by 6% premarket. ICE shares are flat. The two firms signed a memorandum of understanding to build NYSE’s planned Digital Trading Platform. Securitize will serve as a design partner, focusing on how transfer agents — the entities that track ownership and handle corporate actions — operate when securities are issued and settled on blockchain rails. Securitize, backed by large asset managers like BlackRock and Ark Invest and registered with the SEC as a transfer agent, is expected to be among the first firms eligible to mint tokenized versions of stocks and ETFs on the platform, subject to regulatory approvals. The firm's broker-dealer arm could also take part in trading, giving it a foothold across both issuance and market activity. The move comes as traditional exchange behemoths like NYSE and Nasdaq are doubling down on tokenization efforts to bring blockchain rails into stock trading. — Kristzian Sandor Read more.
• BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink used his annual letter to shareholders to argue that digital assets and tokenization could help update the financial system, even as he warned that the U.S. economic model is leaving too many people behind. In the letter, Fink said the current system has delivered most of its gains to people who already own assets, while many workers have been shut out of market growth. He tied that imbalance to a wider problem in the U.S., where rising inequality, high government debt and weak participation in capital markets are putting pressure on the old model of finance. “Capitalism is working—just not for enough people,” Fink wrote. His proposed fix centered on tokenization and digital distribution as tools to expand access to investing and make markets run better. Tokenization, Fink said, could “update the plumbing of the financial system” by making investments easier to issue, trade and access. The idea is simple: If ownership of assets is recorded on digital ledgers, moving a fund share, bond or other security could become faster and cheaper. In practice, that would allow a regulated digital wallet to hold not just payments, but also tokenized bonds, ETFs and fractional interests in assets such as infrastructure or private credit. — Helene Braun Read more.

Regulatory and Policy

• Crypto industry insiders got their first look at the revised market structure bill in the Senate, and the opening impression was that the language on allowable stablecoin yield was overly narrow and unclear, according to a person familiar with the current draft. The new language, which was announced Friday by Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Thom Tillis, would ban yield payments for simply holding a stablecoin. It would also restrict any approach that makes the program equivalent to a bank deposit, and it imposes further limits on other potentially allowed activities, the person said, adding that the mechanics of determining activities-based stablecoin rewards remain uncertain. The crypto industry got its first look at the revised section of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act earlier this week during a closed-door review on Capitol Hill in Washington, an attempt to clear a roadblock to getting a hearing in the Senate Banking Committee. Bankers had insisted that stablecoin rewards look nothing like interest-bearing bank deposits, because they argued the competing product could hamstring the industry and strangle lending. So, the compromise will allow rewards programs for users' stablecoin activities but not balances. — Jesse Hamilton Read more.
• Brazil’s new finance minister, Dario Durigan, is expected to delay a public consultation on applying a tax on financial operations, locally known as Imposto sobre Operações Financeiras (IOF), to some cryptocurrency transactions, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. Durigan took office on March 20 after Fernando Haddad stepped down to run for governor of São Paulo. Reuters said the new minister wants to focus on microeconomic measures and avoid proposals that could trigger conflict with Congress during an election year. The postponed consultation centered on a draft decree that could classify some crypto transactions as foreign exchange operations. — Francisco Rodrigues Read more.

Calendar

• Mar. 24-26, 2026: Digital Asset Summit, New York City
• Mar. 30-Apr. 2, 2026: EthCC, Cannes
• Apr.15-16, 2026: Paris Blockchain Week, Paris
• May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami
• Sept. 29-Oct.1, 2026: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
• Oct. 7-8, 2026: Token2049, Singapore
• Nov. 3-6, 2026: Devcon, Mumbai
• Nov. 15-17, 2026: Solana Breakpoint, London

More For You

The effort to protect Ethereum from quantum computing threats has been underway for eight years and is now producing working code.

What to know:

• The Ethereum Foundation has launched pq.ethereum.org as a central hub for its post-quantum security roadmap, research, code and FAQs.
• More than 10 Ethereum client teams are already running weekly post-quantum interoperability devnets as part of a coordinated, open-source effort.
• Ethereum plans a years-long migration to quantum-resistant cryptography across execution, consensus...

Binance tightens market maker rules, tells token issuers they must disclose partners

21 minutes ago

Circle selloff may be overdone as crypto bill weakens Coinbase edge, say analysts

22 minutes ago

Ethereum Foundation prepares for quantum threat with new cryptography roadmap

27 minutes ago

Franklin Templeton puts its $1.7 trillion weight behind Ondo to bring 24/7 stock trading to the blockchain

45 minutes ago

UK political crypto donations banned by Starmer government

1 hour ago

CoinDesk 20 performance update: Stellar (XLM) gains 6% as all constituents rise

2 hours ago

Bitcoin’s refusal to fall signals crypto's underlying strength even as war risks linger

4 hours ago

Crypto giant debuts oil trading, but it's a different model to Hyperliquid's perps

9 hours ago

Gold’s longest losing streak in a century meets bitcoin’s resurgence

5 hours ago

Bitcoin nears $72,000 as rising open interest signals growing leverage in choppy market

5 hours ago

There's a huge $14 billion bitcoin options expiry this Friday and it points to $75,000 as price magnet

7 hours ago

Ripple taps Singapore's central bank sandbox to test stablecoin-powered trade finance with RLUSD

10 hours ago