Ethereum’s staking exit queue has dropped to zero, meaning stakers can now withdraw ETH with almost no delay. At the same time, network activity has climbed to a new peak: Ethereum processed 2,885,524 transactions in a single day last week, the highest daily total in its history.
The rebound marks a clear shift from the slower pace seen through much of 2025. Onchain activity began accelerating in mid-December, and transaction volumes kept rising into early 2026. What stands out is that average fees have stayed near recent lows even as usage increased. That points to a network handling heavier demand more smoothly than in past cycles, aided by recent upgrades and by more activity moving onto layer-2 networks.
Exit queue clears while entry waits remain
Staking conditions now look steady rather than overheated. The empty exit queue suggests there is no broad rush to pull ETH out of staking, while validator entry queues are still showing long waits. In the source material, that mix is presented as a sign that staking demand has not disappeared, but the market is also not experiencing a sharp wave of new deposits or mass withdrawals.
Crypto projects shift toward payments and neobank services
A separate trend is taking shape in product strategy. For years, many of crypto’s most ambitious teams concentrated on core infrastructure such as faster blockchains, cleaner smart contract design and protocol economics. Now, more projects are moving toward payments, cards and neobank-style offerings. The logic is simple: adoption tends to follow utility.
Research from Messari argues that the next wave of crypto neobanks will not just replicate fintech apps on top of blockchains. Instead, they will try to rebuild basic banking functions directly onchain, including spending and borrowing, with less reliance on traditional payment rails. Ethereum restaking platform ether.fi has already expanded from protocol development into payment and banking-style services built on DeFi. Polygon has also announced acquisitions tied to crypto rails and payments infrastructure for stablecoin use cases.
Buterin proposes protocol-level DVT staking
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined a proposal to bring distributed validator technology, or DVT, directly into Ethereum’s staking protocol. DVT allows a validator to run across multiple machines instead of depending on a single node. In current implementations, a validator’s cryptographic key is split across several nodes that sign messages together; as long as more than two-thirds act honestly, the validator can keep operating without penalties such as slashing or inactivity leaks.
Buterin’s argument is that existing DVT systems remain hard to set up and maintain. They often require complicated networking between nodes and rely on cryptographic assumptions that may not be ideal over the long term. His proposed direction is to move that complexity into the protocol itself, letting Ethereum support validator groups without depending on external coordination layers.
Solayer launches a $35 million ecosystem fund
Outside the Ethereum ecosystem, Solayer has introduced a $35 million fund to support blockchain applications built on its infiniSVM network. The fund, backed by Solayer Labs and the Solayer Foundation, is aimed at early-stage and growth-stage teams building products that need real-time execution and sustainable revenue models.
According to Solayer, infiniSVM is a layer-1 blockchain compatible with Solana tooling but built for faster execution and near-instant settlement. The network has demonstrated throughput above 330,000 transactions per second and finality of roughly 400 milliseconds. Chief Product Officer Joshua Sum said the goal is real-time behavior, immediate guaranteed settlement and low latency.
Other developments: Galaxy fund plans and security concerns shift offchain
Other industry news also points beyond protocol design alone. The Financial Times reported that Mike Novogratz-led Galaxy Digital is working on a $100 million hedge fund meant to profit from volatility across digital assets and fintech. The report said the strategy will include both long and short positions, with about 30% of the capital allocated to crypto tokens and the remainder aimed at financial services stocks that Galaxy believes are being reshaped by digital asset technology and regulatory change.
On security, Immunefi CEO Mitchell Amador said that although 2025 was the worst year on record for hacks by losses, the largest failures did not come from broken onchain code. They came from Web2-style operational weaknesses: passwords, keys, compromised devices, manipulated employees and fake support agents. Amador said onchain security is improving sharply and predicted that 2026 will be the strongest year yet for DeFi and onchain protocol code security. His view aligns with findings cited from Chainalysis’ 2026 Crypto Crime Report.