Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols reporter.
In this issue:
- Ethereum At 10: Where Next For The World Computer?
- Linea to Burn ETH With Every Transaction in Bold L2 Upgrade
- Solana Players Unveil ‘Internet Capital Markets’ Roadmap
- Square Begins Rollout of Bitcoin Payments for Sellers, Targets Full Availability by 2026
Network news
10 YEARS OF ETHEREUM: When Ethereum launched on July 30, 2015, it set out to be more than just another cryptocurrency. It aimed to expand the boundaries of blockchain technology itself. While Bitcoin became digital gold, Ethereum pursued a more expansive vision: to be a decentralized “World Computer”—programmable, extensible, and open-ended. A decade later, Ethereum has transformed finance, culture and software. Along the way, it has faced existential crises, volatile markets and fierce internal debates. Now, it stands on the cusp of a new era—one that may see it fully embraced by traditional finance. Ethereum has seen an uptick in the last two months as the project hits the 10 year milestone, with the price of ether (ETH) rebounding to reach $3,800 in July, after it languishing around $1,500 as recently as April. Over the last few months, the ecosystem has seen a new wave of use cases including tokenization and stablecoin growth, and the network also benefited from the trend of companies holding ETH in their treasuries, not just for long-term value, but to earn yield. On the anniversary, leading players from Ethereum’s ecosystem weigh in on the last 10 years.
LINEA’S COMPREHENSIVE PROTOCOL CHANGES: Linea, an Ethereum layer-2 network incubated by Consensys, has unveiled a comprehensive suite of upgrades designed to embed the network deeper into the layer 1’s economic and ideological fabric. Linea’s updated road map, expected to roll out in October 2025, introduces ETH-native staking on bridged assets, a protocol-level ETH burn mechanism, and the allocation of 85% of its token supply to ecosystem development. This move comes as momentum in the Ethereum ecosystem is building, thanks to the growing institutional interest. The Linea team wrote in a press release shared with CoinDesk that their updates will “position Ethereum to meet the needs of sophisticated capital as TradFi begins to onboard to DeFi, and reinforce Linea as a major home of future innovations in on-chain capital markets, staking, and infrastructure.” The team claims that of the updates, Linea will become the first layer 2 to burn ETH at the protocol level and commit 20% of net transaction fees toward reducing Ethereum supply. The remaining 80% of fees will be used to burn LINEA tokens, which are capped in supply, embedding deflationary pressure directly into network activity.
SOLANA PLAYERS UNVEIL ‘INTERNET CAPITAL MARKETS’ ROADMAP: Solana’s ecosystem is coalescing around an updated vision its architects call “Internet Capital Markets”—a decentralized, high-performance foundation for the next generation of on-chain financial applications. While the network has long focused on boosting bandwidth and slashing latency, its latest roadmap dives deep into market microstructure, arguing that the next leap forward lies in giving applications granular control over transaction execution. The roadmap, which was coauthored from leaders of the Solana Foundation, Anza, Jito Labs, DoubleZero, Drift and Multicoin Capital, centers on Application-Controlled Execution (ACE), which will give smart contracts millisecond-level authority over transaction sequencing. “In our conversations with teams across the ecosystem, market microstructure is the single most important problem in Solana today,” the authors wrote.
SQUARE BEGINS ROLLOUT OF BTC PAYMENTS FOR SELLERS: Jack Dorsey’s Square (XYZ) has begun the rollout of bitcoin payments for merchants on its network. Square began onboarding the first sellers, enabling them to accept Lightning Network-powered BTC payments from customers, Owen Jennings, executive officer at Square’s parent company Block (XYZ), posted on X last week. Payments are settled in real-near time using Bitcoin layer-2 Lightning, with Square processing the exchange into fiat. Square plans to make the service available to all merchants using its sales platform by next year. The company piloted the system at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas in May, allowing attendees to make purchases in BTC by scanning a barcode.
In Other News
- Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate owner of bitcoin: said it has acquired roughly $2.4 billion worth of BTC using the funds from its new preferred stock (STRC) issuance. The firm sold nearly $2.5 billion worth of STRC, also dubbed "stretch," to investors, significantly more than the originally planned $500 million. STRC, which aims to deliver a regular dividend to investors initially set at a 9% rate, will start trading on Wednesday on Nasdaq. With the proceeds, the company purchased 21,021 BTC at an average price of $117,256, according to a press release. That brings Strategy’s bitcoin holdings to 628,791 BTC, worth nearly $74 billion at current prices.
- SharpLink Gaming (SBET): the Nasdaq-listed crypto treasury firm helmed by Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin, unveiled that its ether (ETH) holdings increased to 438,190 tokens, worth roughly $1.68 billion at current prices. The company bought 77,209 ether (ETH), or $297 million, through the week ending on July 27. It has also raised $279 million by selling shares, tapping at-the-market equity facility. The Minneapolis-based firm has pursued an aggressive treasury strategy since its late May pivot, raising funds to accumulate the second-largest cryptocurrency and staking the tokens in exchange for rewards.
Regulatory and Policy
- The digital assets industry’s most reliable U.S. Senate ally, Cynthia Lummis, has introduced her latest crypto bill, which would ensure mortgage borrowers could use their cryptocurrency holdings to help secure their loans. Last month, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte directed government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to come up with proposals detailing how they can include crypto holdings to underpin a mortgage. Lummis’ bill would "permit the holdings of a borrower in a digital asset, evidenced and maintained pursuant to a qualified custodial arrangement, to be included in the reserves of a borrower without conversion of the digital asset to United States dollars" — essentially codifying what Pulte is already seeking.
- Roman Storm, the Tornado Cash developer standing trial in Manhattan on charges that the privacy tool he created helped hackers and other cyber criminals launder more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds, won’t take the stand, his lawyers told the court. Storm told District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that he was aware that he had the right to testify in his own defense but chose not to. After Storm made his decision, his defense team, led by Keri Axel and Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP, rested their case on Tuesday afternoon.
Calendar
- Sept. 22-28: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
- Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore
- Oct. 13-15: Digital Asset Summit, London
- Oct. 16-17: European Blockchain Convention, Barcelona
- Nov. 17-22: Devconnect, Buenos Aires
- Dec. 11-13: Solana Breakpoint, Abu Dhabi
- Feb. 10-12, 2026: Consensus, Hong Kong
- May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami
Stay tuned for more updates on the latest advancements in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. Thank you for reading The Protocol.