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The latest report from the non-profit research organization Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC) indicates that the prediction market platform Polymarket may have broader insider trading issues than the previously reported "Green Beret Bet on the Venezuela Raid."The research analyzed 435,000 settled markets from January 2021 to mid-March 2026, with a total trading volume of $54.4 billion, and found that low-probability bets related to government decision-making in military and defense markets had abnormally high success rates. Data shows that the average success rate for such "long-shot bets" in political markets is about 14%, while in some cases of military-related contracts, the success rate exceeds 50%. The study suggests that these markets are difficult to predict based solely on public information and are more susceptible to information asymmetry, including insider trading or professional information advantages.The report also points out that Polymarket's profits are highly concentrated. Research from the London Business School and Yale University shows that about 3% of traders contribute to most of the platform's price discovery; blockchain analytics firm Solidus Labs found that less than 1% of wallets accounted for about half of the profits. For example, in the case of the U.S. airstrike on Iran in June 2025, just hours before the attack, 19 low-probability bets totaling $164,000 concentrated on buying the ultimately realized "YES" contract, with 8 wallets collectively profiting about $1.8 million, including one wallet that made nearly $500,000.Despite the Pentagon's efforts to conceal the operation through decoy bombers and stealth fighters, a few traders accurately predicted the outcome. ACDC recommends that Polymarket strengthen identity verification, set conditional payments for suspicious bets, limit markets where results are determined by a few individuals, and reduce overly detailed contract designs. The report further calls for a broader discussion on whether the public should be allowed to bet on such events.

According to a post by Christine D. Kim on platform X summarizing the 173rd Ethereum consensus layer core developer meeting, to launch the Glamsterdam upgrade before mid-year, developers may need to significantly scale down the upgrade.Although there has not yet been an official acknowledgment of discrepancies in planning and timelines, if issues do exist, they need to be resolved by the end of February. Key discussion points from the meeting include: if a compatible version of EIP-7732 cannot be achieved by the end of February, it will be considered for removal from Glamsterdam and postponed to a future hard fork; performance issues with nodes were discovered in the Consensys Teku client during mainnet stress testing, affecting progress; EIP-7928 requires clients to conduct a small-scale API review; the submission deadline for the Hegota upgrade Headliner EIP proposal is February 4; some client teams have completed preliminary work on the EIP-7688 library update.

According to the minutes of the 172nd Ethereum Consensus Layer Developer Meeting by ACDC, developers discussed the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade and the next phase of the Hegota upgrade.Among them, EIP-8070 "Sparse Blob Pool" has been included as a candidate feature for Glamsterdam, and the second hard fork of Fusaka, limited to blob parameters, has successfully gone live on the mainnet, increasing blob transaction block space by 40%. In addition, the proposal window for the Hegota upgrade is now open, with a deadline of February 5. Relevant proposals must be published on Ethereum Magicians and presented at the developer meeting. The meeting also covered topics such as ePBS testing challenges, suggestions for consensus layer anti-censorship mechanisms, and optimization of the EIP governance process.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 167th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) conference call. This week, developers preliminarily finalized the mainnet activation timeline for the Fusaka upgrade. Fusaka activation (December 3, 2025), BPO 1 (December 17, 2025), BPO 2 (January 7, 2026); developers also decided to maintain the design of the "Proposer-Builder Separation Mechanism" (ePBS) in the Glamsterdam upgrade; the Fusaka development network -3, Holesky, and the recently upgraded Sepolia testnet have no unresolved vulnerabilities.

ChainCatcher news, according to @ralexstokes' summary of the 157th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus Layer Meeting (ACDC), the main topics discussed in this meeting included: Pectra (a review compiling the views of over 40 core developers, reflecting on the upgrade process and looking to the future; an analysis report is forthcoming after the addition of Blobs), Fusaka (peerdas-devnet-7 has been released and is running stably; the client team is currently focused on implementing BPO support; fusaka-devnet-0 is expected to go live on May 26; validator hosting aims to enhance the management of staking keys and validator credentials, improving security, modularity, and user experience. Due to complexity and unresolved issues, there is a risk of schedule delays that may affect the scope or release of Fusaka), and a proposal to create a new platform or upgrade Ethereum Magicians to lower the participation threshold for external contributors, etc.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 153rd Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) conference call.This week, developers reaffirmed the Pectra testing plan and scheduled an upgrade for the newly launched Hoodi testnet on March 26; developers agreed to postpone the mainnet date for Pectra until they see the upgrade status of Hoodi and further testing of Pectra's features on Hoodi; additionally, developers discussed the inclusion of EIP 7688 in the Fusaka upgrade.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 152nd Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call.This week, developers agreed on a new strategy for testing Pectra based on the progress of the Holesky and Sepolia upgrades; developers will continue to work on restoring Holesky to a stable state, which is expected to take about three weeks; additionally, developers will initiate a Holesky shadow fork, inheriting the exact same state and on-chain environment as the original public testnet.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 151st Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call. During the meeting, developers discussed the client teams' readiness for the Pectra upgrade on the Holesky testnet and the follow-up work on PeerDAS Devnet 5. Developers also agreed to finalize EIP 7872, the maximum blob flag for local builders, and EIP 7870, hardware and bandwidth recommendations for validators and full nodes.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim posted a summary of the 150th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) conference call. This week, developers agreed to leave a 30-day buffer between the last public testnet upgrade and the mainnet upgrade, allowing network stakeholders sufficient time to update their software; if the public testnet launches smoothly, the earliest activation time for Pectra on the Ethereum mainnet is early April, with developers estimating April 8; in addition, Pectra Devnet 6 launched on February 5. So far, the development network has been running smoothly without any major issues.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 149th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call.This week, developers discussed new vulnerabilities found on Pectra Devnet 5 and agreed to launch another development network before upgrading the public testnet; the developers established a tentative timeline for the activation of the Pectra mainnet, requesting client teams to release updated software by February 3, in order to activate Pectra on the Sepolia and Holesky testnets on February 12 and February 19, respectively; additionally, the developers plan to release the final Pectra software on March 11, 2025, to facilitate the mainnet upgrade.

ChainCatcher message, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 148th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call. This week, developers unanimously agreed that the name for the seventh CL (Ethereum Consensus Layer) fork or upgrade should be named after the star "Gloas"; EF engineer Parithosh Jayanthi pointed out an open issue in the CL specification that developers need to address before launching Pectra Devnet 5; additionally, the hive tests for EL and CL clients have been updated, and most clients performed well in these tests.

ChainCatcher news, summarized by Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim, highlighted that the 147th Ethereum Core Developer Consensus (ACDC) meeting focused on the advancement plan for Pectra Devnet 5. The Mekong network (based on the Pectra Devnet 4 specifications) is running stably, with no new issues reported.Developers suggested removing the GAS limit for validator modification blocks to avoid consensus failures and decided to remove EIP 7742, simplifying the Pectra upgrade process by increasing the Blob count through modifications to the genesis configuration. The team plans to complete the deployment of Pectra Devnet 5 by the end of the year and continue optimizing related EIPs and specifications.

ChainCatcher news, Nethermind researcher Aayush Giri published a summary of the 15th Starknet Core Developer Consensus (ACDC) call. This week, developers discussed the upgrade of the mainnet to version v0.13.3, equipped with Stateless Compression features to reduce mainnet costs; the network architecture is divided into three different layers; new methods to prevent remote consensus attacks; improvements in P2P message routing between nodes, etc.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 145th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) conference call.This week, developers discussed the proposed changes to the Pectra specification to be included in Pectra Devnet 5; there were no major issues with Pectra Devnet 4, and the team has implemented various fixes to allow all users to propose blocks on the development network; Peer DAS Devnet 3 has been closed after a reorganization of 100,000 slots; it is unlikely that the team will launch a new Peer DAS development network before the Ethereum developer conference Devcon concludes.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim summarized the main points of the 144th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus Meeting (ACDC #144):Developers agreed to include a new code change EIP 7742 in Pectra, which allows the beacon chain to dynamically set the network's target and maximum blob gas limits. The inclusion of EIP 7742 indicates that developers may also increase the target and maximum blob gas limits in Pectra. However, some developers raised concerns during the call that incorporating additional EIPs (especially EIP 7742) would delay the activation of other Pectra code changes on the mainnet. Developers also discussed the testing progress of Pectra and PeerDAS development.L2 rollup Base developer Francis Li introduced the urgency and fundamental principles of increasing blob capacity in Pectra. Li suggested increasing the blob gas target to 5 and the maximum to 8, along with additional work at the network layer, such as implementing engine_getBlobsV1. Busa pointed out that the increase in blob capacity should be combined with the deployment of EIP 7742, which introduces a mechanism to dynamically set blob gas targets and maximum limits through CL. Busa stated that the current mechanism for setting these parameters is difficult to change, and introducing EIP 7742 would ensure that developers can easily adjust these settings in the future, such as upgrades like PeerDAS. However, Busa also noted that EIP 7742 requires additional work from the EL and CL client teams for deployment and could delay Pectra's timeline by 1 to 2 months. He urged developers to consider starting the work on deploying EIP 7742 as soon as possible to avoid unnecessary delays in the Pectra upgrade.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 144th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) conference call.This week, developers discussed and coordinated modifications to the Ethereum Consensus Layer (CL). Developers agreed to incorporate EIP 7742 changes into Pectra, allowing the beacon chain to dynamically set the network's target and maximum Blob Gas fee limits; EF developer operations engineer Barnabas Busa stated that he plans to shut down Pectra Devnet 3 immediately; currently, Geth and Ethereum JS clients are ready, and the Lighthouse, Teku, and Nimbus clients on the CL side are also ready.

ChainCatcher message, the Galaxy official website released the summary of the 143rd Ethereum Consensus Layer Core Developers Conference (ACDC). This meeting mainly discussed:Pectra Devnet 3 update (debugging work is still ongoing)Pectra Devnet 4 preparation status (discussion on simplifying requests triggered by EL and delegating them to CL for parsing, etc.)PeerDAS Devnet update (the latest PeerDAS devnet is facing issues with achieving finality, a restart may be necessary)Update on the implementation of "engine_getBlobsV1" (aimed at helping low-bandwidth validators propose blocks in a timely manner, client teams are working on implementing this method, Stokes emphasized that this is the current top priority)Discussion on increasing blob throughput (some developers suggested first increasing the target number of blobs, and then adjusting based on analysis results)In addition, most developers support the proposal of EIP 7742, which decouples the blob counting between CL and EL.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 142nd Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) conference call. This week, developers discussed the decision to split the Pectra upgrade into two hard forks, developers have begun fuzz testing on Pectra Devnet 3, communicated pending issues related to Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) on Pectra Devnet 3, and a developer of the Base Rollup protocol, known by the pseudonym Francis, submitted an analysis report to support increasing the Blob Gas target for the first part of the Pectra upgrade.

ChainCatcher news, Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim published a summary of the 141st Ethereum Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call.This week, developers discussed modifications to the Ethereum Consensus Layer (CL), various updates to the consensus layer specifications and engine API in the Pectra upgrade (including EIP7251 and Beacon block body, etc.), and how to address the proof computation issues for resource-constrained node operators (primarily Home Stakers) in PeerDAS. PeerDAS Devnet2 is expected to be rebuilt on the basis of the Pectra upgrade, rather than Deneb.

ChainCatcher news, summarized by Galaxy's Vice President of Research Christine Kim, reports that Ethereum developers held the 140th All Core Developers Consensus Call (ACDC).The meeting was chaired by Ethereum Foundation researcher Alex Stokes, discussing topics such as the development progress of the Pectra upgrade, PeerDAS, and the naming of the next Ethereum consensus layer upgrade. The developers decided to name this upgrade "Fulu" and plan to use "Fusaka" to refer to the "Fulu-Osaka" upgrade in the future.Additionally, the meeting also addressed technical issues in the Pectra development network and the progress of proposals such as EIP 7742.