ChainFeeds Research’s PRO #155 rounds up updates across Bitcoin protocol work, Ethereum governance topics, new research, and fresh papers. The issue centers on the supply side of Ethereum block building, a proposed way to handle gas accounting under EIP-7999, and Native Ethereum Delegation (NED), a protocol-level design for staking delegation. It also includes Bitcoin quantum-recovery ideas, a Lightning Network congestion proposal, Bitcoin Core release changes, and several MEV and proof-system research notes. On the builder side, Christoph Rosenmayr and Jascha Samadi argue that the scarce asset is not block count but valuable orderflow. Their Dune-based data shows validators have earned about $1.36 billion in execution-layer rewards via MEV-Boost since early 2024, while builders kept about $404 million in builder surplus. Titan, they say, now builds around half of blocks yet captures roughly 80%–85% of surplus. The Bitcoin section includes Shinobi’s view that users who still control private keys should be able to recover BTC locked to hash-addresses without protocol-level confiscation of long-dormant coins. It also covers Bitcoin Optech’s CMTC proposal, Bitcoin Core’s new static Linux binaries, and a change that moves transaction relay throttling from per-peer queues to a global limit. On Ethereum, Anders Elowsson lays out four accounting paths for EIP-7999, while Jeff’s NED research proposes protocol-routed delegation with a worst-case concentration bound. The issue also highlights ragged multi-instance GKR for Poseidon2b, MEV articles and conference videos, and a censorship paper from Derivation Technology, Aarhus University, and Nanyang Technological University.

ChainFeeds Research’s PRO issue #154 pulls together several research threads across Bitcoin and Ethereum. The report highlights Fei Wu’s work on Ethereum’s post-Glamsterdam fee market, where EIP-8037 and EIP-7999 would shift gas pricing from a single-meter model to separate pricing for execution, data, and state creation. Using historical gas changes, the study models demand curves for each resource and finds different elasticities: execution is least sensitive to price, data sits in the middle, and state creation is the most sensitive. Under higher block capacity, state creation could become the new fee bottleneck. On Bitcoin, the report covers josh’s HTLC design aimed at removing reliance on mempool-based preimage monitoring and the free-relay assumption, as well as a staletip P2P message proposed by Ram and w0xlt to improve visibility into stale blocks. On Ethereum research, Hudu Yusuf questions whether stake weight truly reflects effective consensus weight and whether continuous oracle output is always safer than silence, proposing DW-BFT and a structured-silence model. The issue also includes Sidistr’s Arcanum, a compiler-layer approach for keeping source code hidden through a TEE-to-ZK roadmap, and a paper from Old Dominion University on what drives contentious Bitcoin soft forks toward orderly upgrades or lasting chain splits.

Blockaid said Garden’s HTLC is currently under attack, with roughly $450,000 in USDT reported stolen across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum and BNB Chain. Garden later said on X that it had detected abnormal activity, temporarily shut down the application, and started a full investigation. The project added that more information will be released later. The update was cited by ChainCatcher in a brief newsflash. No further details on the attack method or the affected transactions were provided in the source text.

Hybrid crypto exchanges blend centralized matching speed with decentralized on-chain settlement, allowing users to trade fast without giving up custody of their assets.

Dr. Awesome Doge revisited his translation of Mastering the Lightning Network, saying the 17-chapter book fills a major Chinese-language gap on payment channels, HTLCs, onion routing, and Lightning privacy trade-offs.

STON.fi, a leading AMM protocol on The Open Network, has rolled out cross-chain swaps inside its app, enabling stablecoin transfers across TON, TRON, Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum and Robinhood Chain through a single self-custodial interface. The feature is powered by Omniston, an execution layer developed by STON.fi to coordinate the full swap process between source and destination chains. The company said users no longer need centralized exchanges, bridges or wrapped assets to move funds between major liquidity and application ecosystems. STON.fi said most swaps are completed in 15 to 40 seconds, with the fastest taking 15 seconds. Once a swap is confirmed, Omniston matches the order with independent liquidity providers called resolvers, which deliver assets on the destination chain. The process uses paired hash time-locked contracts, or HTLCs, so both sides of the transaction settle together or the swap does not go through at all. Users can see the expected asset and amount before confirmation, and funds are returned if execution fails. The company framed the launch as a step beyond chain-specific DeFi, saying the product is being built around user intent as stablecoin liquidity, consumer apps and DeFi markets spread across multiple networks.

Enigma has introduced Catalyst, a decentralized platform designed to let developers build crypto hedge funds and allow investors to access strategy-driven micro-funds through trustless, cross-chain infrastructure.

Mintlayer releases version 0.6.0 on testnet, enabling native BTC cross-chain atomic swaps via HTLCs, with mainnet migration imminent. The update also includes enhanced swap capabilities, Trezor firmware support, and previews the upcoming ZK Thunder Network Layer 3 scaling solution.