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The Protocol: Berachain Follows Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade With ‘Bectra’

Published

4 недели ago

4 июня, 2025

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Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, the Ethereum protocol reporter on CoinDesk’s Tech team.

In this issue:

Berachain Taps Ethereum’s Pectra Playbook With ‘Bectra’ Upgrade
Ethereum Foundation Lays Off Some Staff Amid R&D Restructuring
Elon Musk Announces ‘Bitcoin-Style’ XChat, But Tech Experts Are Skeptical
Taiwanese Crypto Exchange BitoPro Likely Hacked for $11M in May, ZachXBT Says

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Network News

BERACHAIN’S PLAY ON PECTRA; BECTRA: Berachain is gearing up to be the first non-Ethereum Layer-1 blockchain to fully activate Ethereum’s new execution-layer features. Its Bectra hard fork –– named for Ethereum’s recent ‘Pectra’ upgrade — goes live today, giving more than 100 apps on the chain access to tools that could enhance how users and developers interact with the platform. Because Berachain’s consensus model is different from Ethereum’s, it doesn’t include Pectra’s consensus changes. But since it’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible, developers don’t need to rewrite existing contracts — a relief for the 200-plus apps already live on Berachain. For users, the Bectra upgrade means every wallet can now work like a smart account. They will be able to batch transactions in one click, set spending limits, pay gas with HONEY (Berachain’s stablecoin), or even set up recurring payments. Previously, these features needed custom contracts or third-party implementations (which carry security concerns). — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

ETHEREUM FOUNDATION LAYOFFS AMID RESTRUCTURING: The Ethereum Foundation has laid off some members of its research and development team as part of a broader restructuring effort aimed at refocusing on critical protocol design challenges, the organization said in a blog post. The shake-up comes as the Switzerland-based nonprofit grapples with ongoing criticism over its management and strategic direction. Some in the Ethereum community have warned for over a year that failure to address key technical hurdles could threaten Ethereum’s status as an industry leader, and the organization has already undergone leadership changes in part to address these concerns. The foundation is rebranding its Protocol Research and Development division under the simplified name “Protocol,” and is repositioning the group around three main priorities: scaling Ethereum’s base layer, expanding blobspace (a key part of its data availability strategy), and improving user experience. Due to these changes, several staffers were laid off, though the EF did not disclose how many folks were affected by these changes — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

TECH EXPERTS UNIMPRESSED AT MUSK’S BTC X-FEATURE: Billionaire X owner Elon Musk shared over the weekend the launch of a brand-new messaging app called XChat. Neither the bitcoin market nor the tech community is impressed. A key feature of the new offering is that it’s written with the Rust programming language and uses what Musk touted as «Bitcoin-style» encryption. While it sounds exciting, the crypto community is not particularly psyched, raising doubts about the platform’s Bitcoin-inspired technical promises.. «Bitcoin primarily uses signatures, not encryption. This is like saying, we decided to run our rocket on water, since NASA uses Hydrogen and Oxygen,» Ian Miers, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, said on X. — Omkar Godbole Read more.

CRYPTO EXCHANGE BITOPRO LIKELY HACKED FOR $11M, ZachXBT SAYS: Taiwanese cryptocurrency exchange BitoPro is suspected to have lost over $11.5 million worth of tokens in a May 8 exploit, widely-followed blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said in his Telegram group. The exploit involved unauthorized access to BitoPro’s hot wallets across multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Tron, Solana, and Polygon. The stolen assets were then sold on decentralized exchanges, with proceeds laundered through privacy protocols such as Tornado Cash and Thorchain, and eventually moved to Wasabi Wallet, a Bitcoin mixing service. BitoPro has not issued any public statements acknowledging the breach since the supposed explicit. Users were informed of a temporary service suspension due to «system maintenance” last month, and there was little social chatter in popular crypto X circles around the incident at the time. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

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In Other News

A representative of the Trump Organization said the group “knows nothing” about a crypto wallet project called the “$TRUMP Wallet,” despite the app’s branding and claims being tied to the U.S. president. “The Trump Organization knows nothing about this project,» a spokesperson for the Trump Organization told CoinDesk. Meanwhile, an X account linked to the President’s memecoins said that the wallet was “coming soon,” even after several of his representatives denied the rumors.— Helene Braun Read more.
World Liberty Financial, the Trump family-backed crypto firm, just dropped $47 worth of its USD1 stablecoin to each wallet that participated in its WLFI token sale. The move comes as USD1, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar and backed by Treasuries and fiat reserves, expands across blockchains as result of Chainlink’s CCIP integration. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

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Regulatory and Policy

French authorities have charged 25 people, including six minors, for their roles in a spate of crypto kidnappings in Paris, with the majority of the suspects connected to the recent failed kidnapping attempt of a crypto exchange CEO’s family, Paris’s public prosecutor’s office said, Le Monde reported Saturday. The investigation is focused on the kidnapping attempt of the daughter and grandson of the CEO of crypto exchange Paymium, Pierre Noizat, that occurred on May 13, the report said. — Camomile Shumba Read more.
The U.S. Senate may be fast approaching a final vote on regulating stablecoins, which would be a high-water mark for crypto legislation in Congress, but Representative French Hill said the Senate’s bill has some key differences with a similar effort in the House of Representatives, and those would need to be ironed out before it can become law. «The bills are substantially similar,» said Hill, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee that has been at the forefront of the congressional negotiation over stablecoins for years, at an Atlantic Council event on Tuesday. «There are some differences that are not insurmountable but do need to be rectified and clarified.»— Jesse Hamilton Read more.

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Calendar

June 8-22: Berlin Blockchain Week, Berlin
June 24-26: Permissionless, Brooklyn
June 30-July 3: EthCC, Cannes
July 16-18: Web3 Summit, Berlin
Sept. 22-28: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore
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

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Litecoin Slips Below $86 as Resistance Holds; Traders Watch Bitcoin Dominance

Published

2 часа ago

30 июня, 2025

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Litecoin (LTC) tried to punch above $88 during Monday’s trading session, but met a wall of sell orders near that level.

The token has since retreated to $85.21, down 3.17% since the session’s peak and 1.5% in the last 24-hour period. That stumble erased the week’s slim gains and set a new line in the sand for bulls.

The drop came at a time in which bitcoin (BTC) has been its dominance increase, while its volatility dropped below the 40 mark in a potential sign of incoming action.

Technical Analysis Overview

Litecoin’s price swung significantly in the last 24-hour period, covering a $3.05 range, or roughly 3.5%. The token encountered stiff resistance between $88.00 and $88.42, where sellers stepped in heavily, particularly during late evening trading hours, according to CoinDesk Research’s technical analysis data model.

After peaking, LTC reversed lower and found new support at $85.37. The steepest drop was accompanied by the session’s highest trading volume of over 180,000 tokens, signaling strong bearish sentiment.

Short-term trading saw additional volatility. In the last few hours of trading, LTC spiked from $85.65 to $86.05, a 0.47% jump, on a burst of buying. But momentum quickly reversed, sending prices back down to $85.53 on another volume spike.

This cemented resistance near $86.05 and reinforced the new support level at $85.37, leaving Litecoin at $85.42 as the session ended. Traders are watching these levels closely for clues on whether the asset will stage a recovery or slip lower in the days ahead.

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Industry’s PAC Keeps Seeking to Add Allies as Congress Hashes Out Crypto Legislation

Published

3 часа ago

30 июня, 2025

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The crypto industry’s political-finance arm, the towering campaign-funding entity known as Fairshake, dropped another $1 million into the coffers of a special-election candidate hoping to replace a Virginia Democrat who died in office, Representative Gerald Connolly.

The candidate favored by the industry’s chief political action committee, James Walkinshaw, won the Democrats’ so-called firehouse primary over the weekend, in which the party conducted its own polling to determine its chosen candidate among a field of nine. The general election to formally select the Fairfax County region’s next member of Congress is set for Sept. 9, though the Democrat incumbent took about two thirds of the vote in the regular election last year, giving Walkinshaw a heavy advantage.

«We look forward to James joining the growing, bipartisan coalition in Congress that understands the importance of securing America’s leadership in the next generation of technology,» said Josh Vlasto, a Fairshake spokesman, in a statement. He argued that the race again demonstrated that the electorate isn’t moved by critics who attempt to tarnish candidates who show support for the sector and are backed by its campaign resources, as at least one of Walkinshaw’s opponents sought to do.

Fairshake (and its affiliate super PACs, Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress) rose into prominence in the 2024 congressional elections as it amassed a huge war chest from major digital assets businesses, including Coinbase, Ripple and a16z. It devoted its campaign spending in outsized chunks that in some cases dwarfed what was spent by the opponents of the group’s chosen candidates. As a result, Fairshake added a long list of winners to the ranks of Congress’ crypto supporters in those elections, but it has continued its strategy in special elections as one-off contests seek to fill vacated seats such as Connolly’s.

In the case of Walkinshaw, Connolly’s former chief of staff, the spending came from Protect Progress, which focuses on Democrat candidates. While his former boss had voted routinely against crypto issues, Walkinshaw’s campaign site says the candidate favors an «embrace of the next generation of technology,» including blockchain, which the campaign said «can reduce administrative costs for businesses and lower fees for consumers.»

«Congress should establish modern, risk-based regulatory frameworks that support responsible innovation and prevent abuse,» according to Walkinshaw’s website.

The super PAC still has about $116 million on hand as the 2026 congressional election cycle approaches next year, Vlasto said. Current members of Congress it supported in the past round are already at work on major crypto bills that have been advancing this year.

Fairshake makes massive «independent expenditures» in political races, meaning their outside money buys advertising without approval or communication from the candidate. Though it represents crypto interests, the advertising purchased by the group almost never mentions the topic of digital assets, instead focusing on whatever political points are most likely to garner a win.

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XRPL EVM Sidechain Goes Live, Unlocking Ethereum Dapps in XRP Ecosystem

Published

3 часа ago

30 июня, 2025

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Ripple officially introduced the XRP Ledger’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) sidechain to the mainnet in an bid to improve the ecosystem’s interoperability and allow developers to deploy their Ethereum-based decentralized applications (dapps) with the XRPL.

The development adds EVM-compatible smart contracts while maintaining a connection to the XRPL, giving developers access to the ecosystem at a low cost, Ripple said in a blog post. It is designed to eliminate the trade-off between EVM compatibility and XRPL’s own advantages, opening the door for dapps to lean into XRP’s payments infrastructure.

“The XRPL EVM Sidechain introduces a flexible environment for developers to deploy EVM-based applications, while maintaining a connection to the XRPL’s efficiency,” David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer and a co-creater of XRPL, said in the post. “It extends the capabilities of the ecosystem without changing the fundamentals that make the XRPL reliable.”

The sidechain operates as a separate blockchain that is parallel and connected to the XRP Ledger over the Axelar bridge, an interoperability protocol. XRPL’s native token, XRP (XRP), will serve as the native gas token for the sidechain.

The chain is designed specifically for developers, as they can now build and deploy their EVM-based applications, while accessing XRPL’s network of over 6 million wallet holders, Ripple said. The sidechain is planned to eventually also integrate with Wormhole, another interoperability protocol, allowing even more developers to access the XRP ecosystem.