New research from the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, or ACDC, says at least 152 anonymous wallets on Polymarket may have traded on advance knowledge related to U.S. military and defense events, generating about $8 million in profit with an average win rate of 97.2%. The group said it screened settled Polymarket markets for what it described as low-probability, high-value wagers: trades worth at least $2,500 within one hour on outcomes priced at 35% or lower. That process identified 556 wallets with unusual patterns, including 152 linked to military and defense markets. ACDC referred to these wallets as “Orcas,” describing them as addresses that appear suddenly, place bets on unlikely outcomes, win at unusually high rates, and then exit with profits. The researchers said blockchain data alone cannot identify the people behind the wallets or verify where any information came from, so the findings do not by themselves prove insider trading. The report lands as regulators keep a close watch on prediction-market abuse. The CFTC has already brought separate cases this year involving alleged use of confidential information in Polymarket trading.

A draft Ethereum Improvement Proposal, EIP-8363, has triggered one of the sharpest governance fights in the network’s recent history by proposing a gradual burn of validator issuance rewards as the staking ratio approaches half of ETH supply. Backers argue the mechanism would cap excessive staking, slow net supply growth, and reinforce ETH’s scarcity case. Critics say it could do the opposite of what it intends: squeeze out independent stakers, leave exchanges and custodians with an even larger role, disrupt DeFi’s implicit benchmark rate, and weaken the economics behind liquid staking. The debate reaches well beyond protocol researchers. Aave founder Stani Kulechov, Lido, ether.fi, and several listed ETH treasury companies have all become part of the conversation because the proposal could cut a meaningful share of staking-linked revenue. Under estimates cited in the source article, validator issuance returns at the current staking ratio could fall from about 2.6% to around 1.2%, while total validator returns would decline by less because fees and MEV would remain untouched. The proposal is still at the Draft stage and was not included in the confirmed proposal list for the Hegotá upgrade, but the fight has already exposed a deeper split inside Ethereum over how much staking is enough and who should be paid for securing the chain.

A newly filed Ethereum proposal, EIP-8363, has triggered one of the network’s sharpest recent debates by proposing a new issuance-burn mechanism that would steadily reduce consensus-layer staking rewards as total ETH staked rises. The draft, submitted on Aug. 4 by six researchers including EthCC founder Jérôme de Tychey and Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, argues that Ethereum keeps offering a positive incentive for more staking even when added economic security may be delivering diminishing returns. Under the proposal, when effective stake approaches 60.25 million ETH — roughly half of current ETH supply — consensus-layer issuance to validators would be fully offset by a new burn. The draft does not cap staking at 50%, and it does not touch priority fees or MEV, but it would push net consensus issuance toward zero at higher staking levels. Supporters say the change could reduce dilution for unstaked ETH holders and slow the concentration of stake among custodians, exchanges, and liquid staking providers. Critics say it could hit solo stakers, weaken the yield case for institutions, pressure LST-based strategies, and reshape DeFi’s core ETH rate structure. The proposal remains an unmerged Core EIP draft and has not been added to the formal Hegotá Meta EIP.

ChainFeeds Research’s PRO issue #153 pulls together a broad set of Bitcoin and Ethereum research updates, led by three themes: a more granular circuit breaker design for Gloas builder markets, a discussion of proprietary AMMs on Ethereum, and a proposal to eliminate part of oracle extractable value through synchronized state transitions. Ethereum researcher Potuz argues that failures in payload delivery should not automatically force validators into self-building, and instead proposes a layered fallback system based on builder trust. Ethereum Foundation researchers Mike Neuder and Maryam Bahrani describe PropAMM as a middle ground between traditional AMMs and RFQ systems, preserving onchain execution while letting professional market makers update pricing parameters more actively. Oraclizer CPTO Jay Kim, meanwhile, frames OEV as a structural timing problem and outlines a model where updates and downstream consequences are bound into a single cross-domain atomic transition. The report also covers a Coldcard hardware signer warning tied to weak seed entropy, two denial-of-service bugs in Core Lightning, a zkPoH concept for proving ownership of at least 1 BTC without exposing specific UTXOs, native randomness sourcing for onchain games, selected items from The MEV Letter #148, and a phishing paper that says transaction simulation itself can become an attack surface.

Ethereum core developers have set May 7, 2025, as the target mainnet date for the Pectra upgrade after a successful Hoodi testnet run, with the release expected to improve scalability, fees, and account functionality.

Ethereum core developers have set May 7, 2025 as the mainnet launch date for Pectra after a successful Hoodi testnet run. The upgrade targets lower fees, higher blob capacity, better account functionality, and stronger coordination between Ethereum’s execution and consensus layers.

Ethereum core developers have scheduled the Pectra upgrade for mainnet on May 7, 2025, following a successful final Hoodi testnet run. The upgrade targets scalability, lower fees, and improved user account functionality.

Ethereum core developers have confirmed the Pectra upgrade will launch on mainnet on May 7, 2025, following a smooth final test on the Hoodi testnet. The upgrade brings key features like doubled L2 data capacity and smart accounts.