Compiled | GaryMa Wu said Blockchain
The Wu said team summarized important developments in the blockchain technology field for July:
Bitcoin
· The application and controversy of OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK (CSFS). Developers discussed how CTV+CSFS can accelerate the transition of the Lightning Network to PTLCs, simplifying protocol stacking, but progress is hindered by a lack of tool support and standardization, sacrificing on-chain efficiency. An open letter (signed by 66 people) requests Bitcoin core contributors to prioritize the review and integration of CTV+CSFS within six months, sparking intense discussion. Controversies include the necessity of supporting old scripts, the limitations of CTV vaults (such as address reuse and the risk of fund theft), and the advantages of key deletion and static recovery. Bitcoin core contributors criticized the letter for pressure, emphasizing the need for technical consensus rather than public pressure. Discussions about CTV+CSFS show its potential to reduce transaction size and support non-interactive anchoring, with some ideas validated through testing software.
Ethereum
· Fusaka upgrade progress: The latest Fusaka mainnet upgrade timeline (Fusaka candidate release client ready on September 1, public testnet upgrades on September 15/22 and October 6, mainnet upgrade on November 5).
· Glamsterdam upgrade preparation: Developers have begun selecting core features for the next upgrade Glamsterdam, with a shortlist including EIP-7732 (ePBS), EIP-7783 (6 second slot time), and EIP-7805 (FOCIL).
· The Ethereum mainnet's Gas Limit has been raised to 45 million.
· Vitalik Buterin and Toni Wahrstätter jointly proposed EIP-7983, suggesting setting the gas limit for a single Ethereum transaction at 16.77 million (unrelated to the block gas limit), aimed at enhancing the network's resistance to DoS attacks, alleviating load imbalance, state bloat, and block validation delays caused by high gas transactions, while optimizing zkVM compatibility and parallel execution efficiency. The proposal is currently in draft stage.
Ethereum L2s
· The Polygon PoS network launched the Heimdall v2 consensus layer upgrade, the most technically complex hard fork since the mainnet launch in 2020. This upgrade transitioned Heimdall from the old Tendermint + Cosmos SDK v0.37 to CometBFT + Cosmos SDK v0.50, reducing finality to about 5 seconds and completely removing old technical debt.
Solana
· The Jito Foundation and Jito Labs jointly launched the Solana block building architecture Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM), which implements verifiable transaction ordering, programmable execution logic, and a new revenue distribution mechanism through a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), aimed at mitigating harmful MEV and enhancing on-chain transparency. BAM consists of scheduling nodes (BAM Nodes), upgraded validator clients (BAM Validators), and a plugin system that supports custom transaction ordering logic. Developers can charge fees through plugins, and node operators, validators, and stakers share revenue according to a built-in model.
· The SIMD-0256 proposal to increase Solana block limits to 60M CUs has been activated on the mainnet.
· The Solana core development team released a new proposal SIMD-0286, proposing to increase the computation limit per block from 60 million to 100 million compute units (CUs).
BNB Chain
· BNB Chain completed two hard fork upgrades (Lorentz & Maxwell) in the first half of 2025, reducing block time to 0.75 seconds, final confirmation time to 1.875 seconds, peak daily transaction volume to 17.6 million, and average Gas fees to about $0.01. Through the Goodwill Alliance, malicious MEV attacks were reduced by 95%. In the second half of the year, BNB Chain will increase the block Gas limit to 1 billion to support more frequent on-chain activities. In 2026, BNB Chain aims to enhance transaction confirmation speed, processing capacity, and introduce native privacy features.
· The BNB Chain community proposed BEP-593, planning to introduce a highly efficient consensus mechanism, bringing the following technical improvements: registration of validator node IDs to enhance node management efficiency; faster direct message propagation to reduce network latency; and reduced network congestion to improve overall performance. This proposal aims to further optimize the decentralized network efficiency of BNB Chain.
· BNB Chain announced that the FastFinality mechanism has been fully integrated into the Binance platform: transaction confirmations have been reduced from 15 blocks to 5 blocks, improving confirmation speed by 83%. Supported by over 66% of validator consensus, ensuring security. It provides a faster settlement experience for applications such as DeFi, NFTs, and on-chain games. This mechanism significantly enhances the responsiveness and user experience of on-chain applications.
Base
· Base launched BaseApp, described by the community as 'the Crypto version of WeChat + Douyin + Alipay + App Store'. BaseApp integrates AI Agent, Mini App collection, Farcaster information flow, and video flow, providing a seamless on-chain social, payment, and application distribution experience.
Hyperliquid
· Hyperliquid successfully deployed the CoreWriter system contract on the mainnet, marking seamless bidirectional interaction between HyperEVM (Hyperliquid's smart contract layer) and HyperCore (high-performance trading engine). The launch of CoreWriter equipped HyperEVM with the ability to write and change HyperCore states, complementing the atomic data reading capabilities previously achieved through Read Precompiles (including prices, order books, user holdings, etc.), without relying on off-chain systems or complex logic. The launch of CoreWriter marks an important step for Hyperliquid from a purely decentralized perpetual contract platform to a programmable financial ecosystem.
Cosmos
· The Cosmos team announced the decision to pause plans to launch EVM platforms on Cosmos Hub and will reassess related paths. The team stated that the cost of building VMs is high, has a significant impact on the existing user experience, and does not align with the core advantages of the Cosmos multi-chain interconnected ecosystem. In the future, the focus will be on providing services through IBC and strengthening the Hub's role in the L1 service market.
Others
· The DoubleZero protocol, focused on optimizing communication efficiency in distributed systems, announced native multicast support. Currently, most blockchains rely on unicast, where each validator repeatedly sends the same data packets to each peer node, wasting bandwidth and increasing latency. The core advantages of multicast include: single transmission, in-network replication, data delivery only to subscribers, and routing via deterministic fiber paths. DoubleZero introduces multicast technology into decentralized systems for the first time through on-chain group configuration and permission management, matching the performance of traditional financial infrastructure.
· Sonic Research released the SonicCS 2.0 consensus protocol, adopting a DAG architecture and introducing overlapping election mechanisms to parallelize transaction ordering of multiple blocks. The new protocol represents voting structures through a 0–1 matrix and utilizes SIMD instruction sets (such as AVX2) to vectorize the election process, accelerating voting and aggregation calculations. Testing over 200 epochs on the mainnet showed an average speedup of 2 times and a 68% reduction in memory usage. The official plan is to integrate this protocol into future client versions and release a technical report detailing its implementation.
· GMX V1's GLP pool on Arbitrum was attacked, with approximately $40 million in tokens transferred to unknown wallet addresses. In response to the GMX hacking incident, SlowMist pointed out that the root cause of the attack was a design flaw in GMX v1: short selling operations would immediately update the global average short price (globalShortAveragePrices), which in turn affected AUM (Assets Under Management) calculations, leading to manipulable GLP prices. The attacker exploited the ability to enable timelock.enableLeverage permissions when executing orders via Keeper, creating large short positions through re-entry attacks, manipulating the global average price, artificially raising the GLP price in a single transaction, and profiting through redemption arbitrage.
· Sonic Labs deeply analyzed its self-developed high-performance Ethereum virtual machine SonicVM. SonicVM achieved an execution rate of 1300 MGas/s on the Sonic mainnet through the introduction of a new Long-Format instruction encoding, hash function optimization, and instruction scheduling reconstruction, improving about 6.5 times compared to Geth. To ensure compatibility, SonicVM adopted its self-developed consistency testing framework, interfacing with 14 versions of Geth's specifications, and running over 16 billion test cases.
· Anoma officially launched its testnet on July 15, introducing a decentralized operating system architecture based on 'user intent' for the first time, and demonstrated its cross-chain capabilities through a 3D visual interactive interface. Anoma stated that this system aims to eliminate the complexity of multi-chain application development and has collaborated with projects such as Celestia, EigenLayer, Near, and RiscZero, planning to gradually launch mainnet features across multiple L1 and L2 networks.
· The Core Foundation officially launched Rev+, a protocol-level on-chain revenue sharing mechanism, providing ongoing incentives for developers, stablecoin issuers, and decentralized organizations. Rev+ allows project parties and stablecoin issuers to obtain stable income from on-chain transactions, with Gas fees distributed according to transaction volume, address activity, and other contributions.
· The third-party Layer1 blockchain network Tac announced its mainnet launch, dedicated to seamlessly connecting EVM DApps to the TON and Telegram ecosystem. This network allows Telegram users to directly use DeFi protocols like Curve, Morpho, Euler, etc., within the messaging application, while providing developers with a deployment method that does not require rewriting code. Tac has raised a total of $11.5 million, with the latest round led by Hack VC.
· AI content verification network Mira announced the launch of Mira Verify, a system that identifies hallucinations and misinformation through a multi-model consensus mechanism. This system can automatically extract factual statements from text and independently verify them through different AI models in the network, returning labels of 'true', 'false', or 'no consensus'.
· Conflux's Tree Graph public chain released version 3.0 in Shanghai in July, planning to go live in August, with transaction processing capacity increased to 15,000 TPS and supporting AI smart entity calls and RWA settlements. The Tree Graph was developed by a Tsinghua background team and has achieved cross-chain interoperability with multiple mainstream public chains. In the future, it will work with partners to promote offshore RMB stablecoin and cross-border settlement pilots in countries along the 'Belt and Road' initiative.
