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Vitalik Buterin posted on the X platform, stating that there has been an increasing discussion about the ongoing role of L2 in the Ethereum ecosystem. Due to the slow progress of L2 entering phase 2, and the expansion of L1 itself, it is expected that the Gas limit will significantly increase by 2026. This means that the original vision of L2 as Ethereum's "branded sharding" is no longer applicable, and new paths are needed.Vitalik Buterin pointed out that L1 no longer needs L2 as branded sharding, and that L2 cannot or is unwilling to meet the attributes required for true branded sharding. He suggested that L2 should identify value points beyond "scalability," such as privacy, efficiency for specific applications, extreme levels of scalability, non-financial application design, ultra-low latency, and built-in oracles. When handling ETH or other Ethereum assets, L2 should at least reach phase 1 and support maximum interoperability with Ethereum. Additionally, Vitalik Buterin stated that he has become more convinced of the value of native Rollup precompiles in recent months, especially after having the ZK-EVM proof needed for scaling L1. This precompile would make EVM verification without a security committee feasible. He believes that research should be conducted on how to design this precompile so that it can verify the EVM portion when L2 includes "EVM and other content." This would make achieving secure, robust, and trustless interoperability with Ethereum easier and enable synchronous composability.

Aave and Lens Protocol founder Stani Kulechov posted on X that he will transfer the governance of the social protocol Lens Protocol to the Msak Network team, which has been focused on advancing the development of Lens Protocol at the application layer.The Lens social foundational module will always remain open source and will continue to serve as the infrastructure for anyone building social applications on a decentralized track. The original team will continue to serve as technical advisors while focusing on innovation in DeFi, which has always been their core area of expertise.

X official creator account @XCreators announced that X has reached a new high in creator earnings distribution by the end of 2025 since the launch of the profit-sharing program, and it will increase incentives for original writing content. The official stated that 2026 is designated as the "Year of Creators," and the platform will focus on investing in long-form content such as articles, and plans to launch a more detailed Creator Studio earnings overview panel.The announcement shows that X will award an additional $1 million bonus to the most outstanding original articles in the next earnings reward cycle. Participating articles must be original content, with a minimum word count of 1,000 words, and the main evaluation criterion will be the exposure on the homepage timeline, limited to U.S. users. Articles that violate platform policies, contain hate speech, fraud, or manipulative content are not eligible to participate. The publication window for eligible articles is from January 16 to January 28.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on social media that in 2014, he envisioned building a decentralized, permissionless application network based on a technology stack. Now, all the conditions to realize the original Web3 vision are in place and will continue to strengthen. It is time to build a decentralized world.He mentioned that the decentralized messaging protocol Waku has supported applications like Railway and Status, and IPFS performs strongly as a decentralized file retrieval method, although storage issues need improvement. Taking Fileverse, a decentralized alternative to Google Docs/Sheets, as an example, its usability has significantly improved, utilizing Ethereum and Gnosis chains for account handling, processing documents with decentralized messaging and storage, and also through open-source "exit tests." He criticized the various drawbacks of "corporate bloated products" and cited cases to prove the risks are real.Today, decentralized applications like Fileverse are good enough to use. He frequently uses them to write and collaborate on documents, contrasting this with the difficulty of decentralized applications in 2014. He calls on builders to collectively embrace the decentralized renaissance.

The CEO of ECC, the original development team of Zcash, Josh Swihart, stated in a post on X that they will continue to fully invest in Zcash. In addition, they will build a new Zcash wallet, which is now open for pre-application.

According to news from the UniAgri community, the ecological token UAT has officially been renamed to OTOV (One Token One Villa). OTOV has supported the OTOV/UAU trading pair on UniAgri and has also been listed on PancakeSwap with the OTOV/USDT pair. 30% of UniAgri's ecological profits will continue to be used for the repurchase and destruction of OTOV, while each transfer and transaction will experience a deflation of 10%, and a tiered price increase mechanism will be implemented, attracting market attention.

According to DL News, an audit by the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea found that the "New Start Fund," aimed at assisting small businesses struggling after the pandemic, provided over $15 million in debt relief to 269 individual cryptocurrency traders.The audit case showed that an individual who received $62,350 in debt relief (a 77% reduction) held approximately $307,000 worth of cryptocurrency at the time. Shin Jin-chang, chairman of the Financial Services Commission, stated that the criteria for selecting beneficiaries will be strengthened, but acknowledged that only legal amendments can fundamentally prevent such situations. Currently, the fund operator, Korea Asset Management Corporation (KAMCO), cannot proactively check whether applicants hold crypto assets unless they voluntarily disclose it.A proposed amendment currently under review in Congress, if passed, would authorize KAMCO to verify the holdings of unlisted stocks and crypto assets of beneficiaries without consent. In recent years, South Korea has gradually authorized tax and local government departments to check and freeze the crypto assets of citizens with unpaid taxes and fees.

Arca's Chief Investment Officer Jeff Dorman published an article this morning calling this round of decline "the strangest cryptocurrency sell-off in history." The market clearly has many positive factors ------ the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts, the impending end of quantitative tightening, strong consumer spending, record corporate earnings, and sustained demand for artificial intelligence, among others; meanwhile, all the so-called reasons for the cryptocurrency sell-off are unfounded ------ MSTR has not sold off, Tether is not insolvent, DAT has not reduced its holdings, Nvidia has not faced a crisis, the Federal Reserve has not turned hawkish, and the trade war has not restarted.Jeff stated: "I still don't understand why cryptocurrencies keep falling. The reason may be simple: despite advancements in technology and positive developments in Washington's policies and Wall Street's movements, they cannot change the fact that there is a lack of buying pressure within the current cryptocurrency ecosystem. Native crypto investors are exhausted, and new funds have not entered the market. Although investors are forward-looking, they will not easily change their investment processes ------ therefore, even though institutions like Vanguard, State Street, BNY Mellon, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs are about to enter the market, they are not yet in position today. The influx of funds will not truly arrive until these institutions can easily allocate crypto assets through the existing authorization systems and investment processes."

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), established with great fanfare by President Trump in January this year to reduce the size of the government, has already been disbanded despite having eight months left in its term.When asked about the status of the Department of Government Efficiency, the Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Cooper, said, "It doesn't exist at all."Cooper added that the Department of Government Efficiency is no longer a "centralized agency." This is the first confirmation from the Trump administration that the Department of Government Efficiency has been disbanded.This agency, led by Musk, was established in January this year and implemented sweeping reforms in Washington, rapidly reducing the size of federal agencies, cutting their budgets, or shifting their focus to Trump's priorities. According to an executive order signed by Trump after taking office, the Department of Government Efficiency was supposed to operate until July 2026. (Jinshi)

JUST DAO announced the cessation of USDJ operations and the transition notice, stating that USDJ has successfully ceased operations, and the original stablecoin system has been updated to a fixed exchange rate model with TRX. In the future, the exchange rate for USDJ will be 1 USDJ = 1.5532 TRX.In response to this matter, TRON founder Justin Sun has made a statement. He emphasized that all user assets before the snapshot will receive a 100% 1:1 rigid redemption. Justin Sun revealed that USDJ is an old project, and the official team has been winding it down for a year, during which they have repurchased over 95% of USDJ in the market at prices significantly higher than 1 dollar.Regarding the remaining approximately 200,000 USDJ in the market, he promised that this portion will also be permanently exchanged at a 1:1 ratio, and users need not worry about asset safety. As for the reason for the winding down, Justin Sun explained that it is due to the continuous upgrade of centralized stablecoin technology, while USDJ is based on the outdated SAI version, and the team has decided to focus all efforts on USDD.

Hyperbot data shows that a whale with a previous 100% win rate opened a 25x long position in Ethereum 40 minutes ago, currently holding a total of 1,976.5634 ETH, with a position value exceeding 6.7 million dollars and in a profit state, liquidation price at 3,358.4 dollars.

According to Hyperbot data, the "original 100% win rate whale" has opened a 10x leveraged ZEC short position, currently holding 6,565.73 ZEC, with a position size of approximately 4.22 million USD and a liquidation price of 685.9702 USD.

According to The Block, Coinbase submitted feedback to the U.S. Treasury, urging it to strictly adhere to the original intent of Congress when formulating the implementation rules for the GENIUS Act, avoiding overregulation, and specifically excluding non-financial software, blockchain validators, and open-source protocols.Coinbase's Chief Policy Officer pointed out that regulation should not consider third-party reward programs as "interest" to avoid contradicting the spirit of the Act. Coinbase also suggested treating payment stablecoins as cash equivalents for related tax and accounting issues. The GENIUS Act was signed in July 2025, establishing a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins in the United States.

ChainCatcher news, former Huobi founder Li Lin is launching a $1 billion Ethereum crypto treasury (DAT) company to initiate fundraising, aiming to raise $1 billion through a private investment in public equity (PIPE), while issuing a 1:1 warrant with an exercise price at a 50% premium to the issue price. The PIPE pricing is expected to be around 0.88 times the net asset value (mNAV).Previously, sources revealed that Li Lin will team up with some of the earliest Ethereum supporters in Asia to establish the crypto treasury (DAT) company, including veteran blockchain investor and co-founder of Distributed Capital Shen Bo, HashKey Group Chairman and CEO Xiao Feng, and Meitu founder Cai Wensheng.

ChainCatcher Information, the Aethir Foundation officially announced that the 1.26 billion ATH tokens originally planned for the Cloud Drop Season 3 airdrop will be fully locked and allocated to the Aethir Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) to strengthen the computing power ecosystem and promote the long-term value growth of the tokens, confirming the continued execution of Aethir Edge Tokenomics v1.0.The redirected ATH tokens will be used for market buybacks and staking to support GPU launches, cloud hosting incentives, and computing power liquidity construction, thereby reducing market selling pressure, stabilizing token prices, and enhancing the practical use value of ATH.

According to ChainCatcher news, on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa monitored that a giant whale, which previously placed limit buy orders, adjusted the price range during the decline. The latest expectation for ETH bottoming is "3660-3710 USD," with a plan to buy 11 million USD, which is 100 USD lower than the original limit order price.

ChainCatcher news, according to Jinshi reports, U.S. banks have moved the expected Federal Reserve rate cut from December to October this year.

ChainCatcher message, according to the Web3 asset data platform RootData X tracking data, in the past 7 days, the original Ethereum blockchain supported by PoS, EthereumPoW, has been the project with the most unfollows from X (Twitter) top figures. The new influential figures on X who unfollowed this project include crypto KOL Kuai Dong(@_FORAB).In addition, the projects with the most unfollows from X top figures also include zkSync.